For sale: $30,000 Portland sternwheeler. Asset or albatross?

There’s something about old boats that makes people want to rescue them. The sternwheeler Jean is no exception.

Built in Portland back in 1938, the stately old tug had two massive steam engines that drove a pair of enormous paddle wheels. It was built to tow log rafts, up to a mile in length, along the Columbia River for the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in Camas.

Owner Chris Jones said the Jean would have been a sight to behold. And today, the boat is still used: “She’s been our home base and workshop, galley and quarters for over a decade now.”

Jones is a 69-year old boat captain and former commercial diver. He’s dealing with a few health problems so he’s liquidating his entire business, Marine Service Specialties Inc., which used to lift sunken vessels out of the river, put them on the deck of the Jean, then fix them up.

Jones’s mooring lease is up and he faces hefty fines by the state. So he needs to let the Jean go.

He could cut up the hull for recycled steel, but the idea pains him. “Oh that’d be a needless waste of an historic piece,” he said.

The Jean is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. But any new potential owner faces challenges. There’s old oil in it, some asbestos, and hardly anybody knows the Jean exists. It’s tucked away off Sauvie Island, and you must take a boat to see the sternwheeler.

The second problem, Jones said, is that anyone who does see the boat falls under its spell.

“There’s been dozens of people with fantastic operations in mind. Gambling casinos, bed and breakfasts, wedding chapel,” he said. “One guy wanted … a woman’s shelter in the middle of the river,” Jones said.

“It just goes on and on. One guy was going to convert the paddle wheel to generate electricity and retire on the revenues.”

Jones said it’s hard to separate the lookie-loos from people who could actually buy the Jean and make a business out of it.

“I think it’d make a great destination spot on the river, like a coffee shop or a lunch shop with a museum,” Jones said. “A B&B is a good proposal, but it all is going to require a good bit of money to get it going.”

A lot of money, because the Jean is a shell of its former self. The sternwheels and the two steam engines are gone. They were ripped out in 1962 when diesel tugs took over. Diesel starts at the turn of a key, whereas it took 12 hours to build up a full head of steam on the Jean. In practical terms, that meant the tug had to be run 24/7 with a crew of three living aboard with a kitchen, showers and bunks.

Much of that interior has rotted away now, and you’d have to sell an awful lot of tea and cakes to pay for turning it into something special, said Dan Yates, the president of Portland Spirit Cruises & Events. “Boats like to have constant maintenance and this one hasn’t had that in decades.”

Yates runs a fleet of boats around Oregon, taking people on dinner cruises and trips. He even runs a sternwheeler out of Cascade Locks. He visited the Jean to see if it’s worth buying, but not with a view to turning it back into a sternwheeler.

“Well you could use it for a hunting camp or some sort of recreational facility like that, where you tow it to some secluded spot and use it as a basecamp,” he said. “Some people have created live-a-boards on a facility like this. And obviously, right now, it’s being used as a warehouse … and that’s a perfectly reasonable use for the vessel.”

The truth is, the value of the Jean does not lie in the fact it’s a sternwheeler; it’s just a hull that will float whatever you’d like to take it.

Yates, for example, owns a lot in downtown Portland where he has a workshop to do maintenance for his boats. He could tug the Jean to a spot nearby and use it as a floating workshop. That would free the downtown lot for more lucrative purposes.

“I’m interested. I’m going to think about this,” he said.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, the Jean was docked in Idaho, where it belonged to the Idaho Historical Society. A wealthy industrialist bought it, then towed it to Portland in the hope of turning it into a pleasure yacht, but that turned out to be too expensive.

At $30,000, the Jean might sound like a good deal for a floating house or restaurant. But keeping the rain out, installing electricity, water and heating would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. On top of that, moorage fees could amount to $2,000 a month in Portland.

Even just anchoring in the river is expensive. The area on the bottom, covered by the vessel’s shadow, is managed by the Oregon Department of State Lands and requires a lease. Spokeswoman, Ali Ryan Hansen understands people get excited about reusing old boats. But they tend to underestimate the costs involved.

“So what happens is, time’s passing, the restoration isn’t happening. The vessel is continuing to age and degenerate and it’s affecting the health and safety of the waterway. And at that point, the costs aren’t restoration anymore. The costs are fines and legal fees,” Ryan Hansen said.

Oregon does not have a dedicated funding stream for cleaning up old vessels that sink. But in 2018, the state spent $12 million dollars to clean up several old vessels at Goble, 50 miles north of Portland on the Columbia River. The clean-up included the 1920s steam-powered River Queen, an old ferry that had been converted into a dancehall.

The Jean doesn’t appear to be anywhere near sinking, but it is 84 years old and on the Oregon Department of State Lands’ list of commercial vessels of concern in the Portland area.

The Jean’s being advertised on Facebook Marketplace for potential customers.