A yacht broker has been trying to sell an old OceanGate submersible for almost $800,000 — but now fears that the shuttered company’s imploded Titan will make that almost impossible.
Steve Reoch listed the 1996-built Antipodes — which OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush bought used as his first submersible — for $795,000 on behalf of the deep-sea-exploration company and has been trying to unload it for them for the past five years, .
But he said it’s clear OceanGate has even less of a chance at selling it now — and he’s done trying to peddle it, too.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” Reoch told the outlet just weeks after Oceangate’s Titan submersible imploded on its journey to the Titanic shipwreck, killing all five people aboard, including Rush.
The broker said he had been trying to sell the 13 ½-foot-long Antipodes for years but only got 🅘some interest from people who “weren’t legit” or were “flakes,” the outlet reported.
The vessel, which was built by Florida-based Perry Submersibles, went through “several people and several owners” before Rush bought it, Reoch said.
“Antipodes is a deep sea manned submersible🌞 with proven experience and an excellent safety record,”.
“She is well equipped and operationally dive-ready, having completed her three year American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) Classification Survey in February, 2017 that included a complete disassembly and inspection, as well as certification deep dive.”
The sub features six electric thrusters, two 58-incಞh hemispheric acrylic domes and is “extremely comfortable for pilot and up to four crew,” the page says, adding that it includes life-support systems for 72 hours for five people.
Its maximum depth is listed at 3ಌ05 meters, or 1,000 feet, far less than the 12,500-foot depth of the famed shipwreck.
Reoch said the multiple dives Rush took on the Antipodes — including a shark-spotting expedition with rapper Macklemore — were all “successful.”
“Everyone came back OK,” he told Insider.
Reoch also noted that the Antipodes meets industry standards under the America📖n Bureau of Shipping, whereas the ill-fated Titan did not receive the bureau’s imprimatur.
Stockton asked the broker to sell the Antipodes when OceanGate began building𓆏 its second sub, Cyclops, according to Insider.
The vessel “wasn’t just sitting in a shed somewhere” while it was waiting to be sold, said Reoch, who explained that OceanGate continued to use it.
But after the June 18 Titan disaster, the broker told Insider that any possible sale of the Antipodes would likely be “tied up in litigation for years” because OceanGate has stopped “all exploration and commercial operations.
“We’re in the process of disassociating ourselves from the vessel because it won’t sell,” he told Insider of his company. “Nobody’s going to be able to sell the submersible for years because of litigation — it’s a waste of my time and has been for five years.”
In addition to Rush, 61, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, prominen🧜t Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman Dawood, perished in the disaster.
Rush has come under intense criticism for what some perceive as lax attitudes about safety that may have contributed to the tragedy.
