Over the past several week, Cruise Fever has reported on Ocean Builders buying a former Carnival Corporation cruise ship that would be used as a floating village.
The company had been selling cabins you could move into and doing monthly leases for those who didn’t want to buy a cabin. However, Ocean Builders announced today that they have canceled the project due to insurance.
No Protection and Indemnity insurance company will insure the cruise ship, MS Satoshi. The company said in a statement that all options have been exhausted.
It was easy for them to get insurance to cover the voyage from where it was parked in the Mediterranean to Panama but assuming it would be easy get insurance to use the ship as a stationary residential cruise ship was incorrect.
The cruise ship cannot be insured which means it cannot legally have a crew. That means the ship would lose its class rating and flag and any possibility of running any of the onboard businesses.
Once the Satoshi reaches Panama next week, she will be refueled & resupplied and then sent to a scrap yard in India. The paperwork was signed late last night to sell it for scrap.
The idea behind the Satoshi was to be a place in the world where the company could experiment, build, and test innovative blockchain solutions in all areas of life and business. Unfortunately, they will not be able to proceed because of archaic big insurance companies that cannot adapt to innovative new ideas Ocean Builders said.
Ocean Builders is in the process of refunding everyone who purchased a cabin on board the cruise ship.
