Entrepreneur spends his life savings transforming abandoned cruise ship - before dream project takes tragic twist

A man spent his entire life savings to repurpose a retired cruise chip - but found renovating the 2,500-ton yacht to be not-so-smooth sailing.

Planning on turning the boat built in 1955 into a museum, Chris Willson bought the vessel on Craigslist in 2008.

Although he made renovations to make the boat livable - he called the boat home for more than 10 years - his efforts to see the boat become seaworthy was costly, he told CNN Wednesday.

'We absolutely loved our time with that ship,' Willson, who is originally from Utah , told the station of the past decade and a half working on the 293-foot boat with his girlfriend, Jin Li.

'[Selling] was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life,' he said of the decision to sell the boat, after pumping in more than $1 million into its refurb.

'It haunts me and I lose sleep over it. I'm not happy about it.'

The 85-cabin originally named Wappen von Hamburg cruiser - the first significant passenger boat built by Germany in the wake of World War II - ended up moored in the California Delta with a new owner who eventually listed the boat for sale.

Impressed by the ship's layout and 'magnificent' staircases, Willson took a trip to Northern California.

'I kind of posed as a potential buyer, even though I really didn't have any interest in purchasing a ship,' he told CNN back in 2022. 'It was a little out of my comfort level, to say the least.'

Once he stepped aboard, he saw firsthand how badly the boat had been neglected over the years - a far cry from the photos he saw from its heyday.

However, hidden beneath the 'junk' and mold was still 'one of the most spectacular layouts of just about any ship I've seen,' he said.

'It's almost the same as if you found an old '60s Corvette in the garage,' he said of the ship's potential.

'You can see the quality is there, but it's so neglected, you almost feel bad for it.'

'The next thing you know, I own a ship,' Willson said - adding how he was able to 'work out a really good deal with the owner of the vessel'.

The ship's renovation, which took place in Rio Vista, included hundreds of bags worth of household trash and old mattresses, he recalled.

'The scale of it was massive,' he said of the undertaking that required volunteers.

'It's almost the same as redoing 15 houses all by yourself.'

After a few months, Willson decided to move on board with his partner from their home in Santa Cruz to focus on the work at hand.

'When I first moved aboard many of my friends and family were in disbelief,' he told CNN. 'It was a rather large change in lifestyle.

'But I view it as more of an upgrade, although we are off grid and running on mainly generators and solar grids.'

As the two worked, Willson learned more about the boat's past.

He found out that it not only served as the inspiration for popular '70s series 'The Love Boat,' but it was also the filming location for the villains' headquarters in the second-ever James Bond movie 'From Russia with Love.'

It served as a cruise ship for around two decades, before changing hands multiple times.

'Nobody knew what the history of the vessel was,' he says. 'And over time, we exposed so much of its history.

'We turned it from just a big ship floating out on the Delta that was rusting away, to probably one of the most famous vintage cruise ships in the world.

'And I've got to be proud of that.'

Willson would go on to funnel his entire life savings into the project, while christening the boat the Aurora after the sunrises he would regularly see on its decks.

However, Willson said he was regularly hit 'three-day notices' to leave the premises by the local government, but cops never 'followed through with an eviction.'

Things went from bad to worse when a military tugboat sank next to the Aurora in January, creating, in his words, a 'pollution issue'.

'Everything kind of changed from that point on,' he explained, revealing how 'there was really no future for the Aurora' at the location.

Moving it would be costly, he said - telling CNN it would have been 'million dollars worth of dredging for us [just] to get out.'

'So we were kind of stuck there,' he said. Then, in October 2023, he and his partner made the painful decision to sell the vessel to an unnamed buyer.

A mere five months later, the boat began to sank.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said at the time, 'It has been determined the ship has suffered a hole and is taking on water and is currently leaking diesel fuel and oil into the Delta Waterway.

The US Coast Guard later removed an estimated 21,675 gallons of oil-contaminated water, 3,193 gallons of waste and five 25-yard bins of debris – all from the vessel.

Willson said he was shocked when he learned that the ship had partially sunk.

'I didn't see it sinking,' he said on Wednesday. 'We had it for 15 years, and we had no problem with it.

He added: 'I meticulously maintained that ship. I checked everything on it multiple times every day. We were on it all of the time... It just saddens me like nothing else.'

Despite the criticism he faced from locals, Willson said he still looks back on his time with the ship fondly.

'We absolutely loved our time with that ship,' Willson said. 'It [selling] was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life.

'It haunts me and I lose sleep over it. I'm not happy about it.'