Always Wanted to Own a Giant Cruise Ship? Here’s Your Chance

OK, this article is off-topic. But how often do you read about “bargains” like this one?

Do you have an urge to own the largest yacht at the local yacht club? (I am assuming your local yacht club has dock space enough to handle this thing.)

One of the world’s newest and largest cruise ships, the 150,695-ton World Dream, will be auctioned off to the highest bidder at a sheriff’s sale on Dec. 21 — and anyone can bid.

World Dream as it looked at its debut in 2017.

That means that — with a high-enough bid — you could be in possession of one of the world’s most state-of-the-art cruise vessels in time to visit it for the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s Day

Not that you could do much with it — at least not initially. The 18-deck-high ship, currently anchored off Singapore, is designed to operate with a crew of nearly 2,000 people, none of which would come with the purchase.

Originally built at a cost of nearly $1 billion for the now-defunct, Asia-based line Dream Cruises, the five-year-old vessel is being sold “as is, where is,” according to the office of the sheriff of Singapore, which is conducting the auction. That means that it won’t come with crew or formal instructions on how to operate it.

Plus, you better be ready to pick it up… in Singapore. And bring a crew as you can’t handle it alone.

World Dream has been under arrest in Singapore since Dream Cruises and its parent company, Genting Hong Kong, went out of business earlier this year.

The vessel auction is being conducted by the sheriff of Singapore by court order to raise money to pay off the company’s debts.

According to a notice of the sale on a Singapore government website, anyone who puts down a $50,000 deposit can bid on the vessel. If you don’t win the bidding, you get the $50,000 back.

Before you put in a bid for just a few dollars, hoping for a bargain, know that there’s a caveat to what you’ll end up paying: In addition to the winning bid, whoever buys the vessel will also have to pay for the unconsumed fuel remaining in the ship’s fuel tanks, which is worth $1,175,887, according to the sheriff’s office.

You can read more at: https://thepointsguy.com/news/world-dream-cruise-ship-auction/.