Coastal Venture/ Sunmar Star Meets Her Maker

Coastal Venture (ex-Sunmar Star, Elin S., Industrial Patriot, Strong Icelander; IMO#7119678) has moved on to a better life…which is to say she was deliberately sunk as part of the Charleston Deep Reef off of South Carolina on June 1, 2022.

https://www.scmemorialreef.com/projects

She was built as the freighter Elin S. in Svendborg, Denmark in 1972. The 1301 ITC/82 TEU vessel had been owned by Stevens Towing of South Carolina since 2009, and was used to carry cargo domestically and abroad. Coastal Alaska Line (a sister company to Coastal Transportation Inc.) owned her between 1999 and 2009, first as a container ship running between Seattle and Dutch Harbor. Then as a general cargo vessel to places such as Guam, Okinawa, Hawaii, and various East- and Gulf-Coast ports.

Prior to 1999, as Sunmar Star she was owned by Sunmar Shipping, who operated her as a container ship. Of the three vessels Sunmar owned she was the only one not altered by attaching a newly built forebody to an old engineroom/superstructure.

But at the age of 50 it was her time to go. I note in the video that the method of sinking her was simple: a boat just filled up her cargo holds with a fire hose until she went under.

This is the second former Sunmar Shipping vessel to be retired in a spectacular way this year. Coastal Sea/Sunmar Sea was sunk by a Quicksink guided bomb on April 28.

4 Likes

The dramatic music is nice. Farewell old girl.

I sailed on her when she was owned by Sunmar