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Deltaville, VA – After 4-plus years of sitting on the hard on the shore of Fishing Bay the former U.S. presidential yacht Sequoia has been loaded onto a barge to begin a new chapter in its long legacy. Engineers, yacht designers and specialized construction and moving teams transferred the 104-foot vessel from the beach onto its floating platform on Tuesday, September 17, 2019 to begin the journey to Belfast, Maine.

Years of legal wrangling and neglect resulted in the yacht’s current condition as it sat wrapped and blocked waiting for various owners, judges and financiers to make decisions about its fate. The long-awaited attention to getting the vessel under repair has apparently begun with this latest effort.

Bruce Mareck, P.E., who oversaw the planning and execution of Sequoia’s move onto the barge said, “This effort was the result of a superb team putting together accurate calculations and solutions for getting the 100-plus ton boat moved safely from the railway onto the barge. This is the first step to getting Sequoia renovated and refitted.”

The story of how Sequoia ended up in Deltaville, VA and why it stayed so long is a tawdry tale with many twists and turns including loan default, a judge awarding ownership to financiers for one dollar, insurance companies battling it out, accusations of malfeasance, raccoons moving onboard, gossip and finger-pointing.

Jon Farinholt is principal at Chesapeake Boat Works and Fishing Bay Marina, where Sequoia has sat for the past 4-plus years. While watching the loading of the yacht onto the barge on Tuesday he said, “This has been a long time coming. The vessel deserves to be cared for properly. We are looking forward to using our facilities here for ongoing restorations and other work now that our railway is open. I look forward to seeing Sequoia sail again.”

Plans are to move the vessel to Cambridge, MD aboard the smaller barge that it is now loaded on and transfer it to a larger one for the trip up the Atlantic coast to a shipyard in Belfast, ME where it will undergo repairs. No timeline was provided by the on-site project managers for completion of repairs or final plans for Sequoia.

This description from Wikipedia provides detailed background on USS Sequoia, which is the former presidential yacht used during the administrations of Herbert Hoover through Jimmy Carter, a National Historic Landmark and perhaps the most important presidential artifact in private hands. Sequoia was formally decommissioned on December 9, 1935, by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, yet continues to be referred to with “USS” designation. Often called the “floating White House”, the Sequoia offered presidents, first families and high-ranking government officials a place to escape the complexities of official life while also serving as the backdrop for many of the most significant moments of 20th-century American history. Sequoia is believed to have been named by her original owner, Emily Roebling Cadwalader, after Sequoyah, a leader of the Cherokee Nation.