HITLER YACHT IN WRONG SPOT

TUE JUN 13 1989           ED: FINAL
 SECTION: LOCAL             PAGE: 1     LENGTH: 24.78" MEDIUM
 ILLUST:   photo: Abe RESNICK; map: location where yacht was sunk and where it should have been 
sunk
 SOURCE:  DAN FROOMKIN Herald Staff Writer
 DATELINE:
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                    HITLER YACHT IN WRONG SPOT



      The plan was to sink the battered wreck of Adolf Hitler's yacht in 250 feet of water off Miami Beach 
to make an artificial reef.
      Instead, on June 4, the wooden yacht was dropped 20 feet onto a living reef that it is destroying, in a 
shipping lane where it presents a hazard to navigation.
      "They didn't get close," complained Susan Markely, an administrator with Dade County's Department 
of Environmental Resources Management (DERM).
      The county had given Miami Beach Commissioner Abe Resnick permission to sink the boat at a site 
1.5 miles away.
      The 85-foot Ostwind is rocking on a healthy bed of coral and sponges, at the border of an anchoring 
spot for freighters and other vessels bound for the Port of Miami.
      Coast Guard Lt. Al Crespo said the wreck has been marked with a flashing buoy.
      "It's close enough that if a ship swings on its anchor, it could hit it," Crespo said.
      Resnick planned the yacht-sinking to coincide with a cruise marking the 50th anniversary of the 
"Voyage of the Damned," in which more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the S.S. St. Louis were forced 
off the Florida coast and back to Europe, where most were killed in concentration camps.
      Resnick got the yacht for free from a Jacksonville marina owner and raised more than $20,000 to 
bring it to Miami Beach. He said he wanted to turn a symbol of evil into a symbol of life.
      On June 4, more than 300 people were jammed aboard the tiny Florida Princess cruise ship, rocking 
in four-foot seas, when somehow signals got crossed and the yacht went down too soon.
      Nobody has stepped forth to take the blame, but officials from DERM and from the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over federal waters, are demanding that Resnick, as the owner of the 
yacht, take immediate action to raise it.
      Chuck Schnepel, the Army Corps' chief regulatory officer in Miami, said if the yacht isn't removed by 
June 22, he'll do it and bill Resnick.
      Schnepel said the salvage job would cost $5,000 to $10,000 if the boat is intact -- and a lot more if it's 
in pieces, which is likely.
      Resnick blames A.M. Daly Jr., captain of the tug that towed the yacht from Jacksonville to Miami 
Beach for the ceremony.
      Resnick was at the bow of the Florida Princess helping survivors of the St. Louis toss carnations into 
the water in memory of Nazi victims when Daly's swing of a sledgehammer sent the yacht into the sea.
      "It was truly an incredible, incredible historic event and suddenly -- boom! -- somebody made a 
mistake," Resnick said.
      Resnick, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, had intended to swing the sledgehammer himself in 
front of a crowd that included 60 journalists from around the world.
      Daly, who had met with DERM officials the day before and was shown maps with the artificial reef 
site marked on them, said he just did what the captain of the Florida Princess, Chris Cadley, told him to 
do.
      Cadley said Monday that Daly was sloppy. Cadley said Daly suggested the two boats meet about two 
miles off the Fontainebleau Hilton. The intended drop site is in fact about two miles due east of the hotel.
      But Cadley, who said his role was just piloting the sightseeing ship, stopped about two miles southeast 
of the Fontainebleau. And Daly dropped the boat right there.
      Two DERM biologists waited in a boat at the artificial reef site, but nobody came.
      Resnick said he will not pay for the removal. "The people who are responsible are going to pay," he 
said.
      "I think that's going to end up being decided by attorneys," said Ben Mostkoff, DERM's artificial reef 
director, who spent Monday in Jacksonville interviewing Daly.
      "Hitler's soul is still somewhere there," said Resnick. Then he paused. "I'm just kidding." ADDED 
TERMS:  mistake jewish ship environment