The initial idea to buy an historically interesting vessel worth restoring was born in the late 90th when her current "caretaker" was employed as 1st Engineer on expedition cruise vessels, traveling world wide to some of the remotest places on earth. 

A private, year around life aboard expedition vessel with an interesting history, reliable and money wise operatable machinery making it economically viable. That was "all" I was looking for! 

The hunt for this, quite rare, kind of vessel finally started in 2008 and after two years of searching I eventually discovered her on a broker website while traveling to Montreal /Canada  in order to inspect a nice and old salvage tug boat.

I had been looking at vessels in Central and North America, from Montreal to Panama, with no real luck. While in Montreal I decided to recontact a local Seattle broker who had sold end of 2010 a 125' research vessel I was interested in. It came like it had to come, she was back on the market because the buyer didn't finished to pay her. Sure enough, that she is still available and floating the ticket  was bought and I was on my way  to inspect her. Once on board it took me less than five minutes to realize that she was the one. Since I had made some research in 2010 I knew that her track record was remarkable. She would be a great storyteller if she could speak. Not much what this boat didn't went through. She was what I had kept looking for....pure history afloat.

Named Sea Trek at that time she was in pretty rough shape. After years alongside without real maintenance she was pretty much derelict. The previous owner had tried to re-fit her in order to use her as whale watching cruise vessel in Alaska.  Apparently this didn't worked out due to a number of reasons and plans were cancelled without having any Plan B.   

Preparation works started in 2011 in order to get her "ready" to sail the approx. 4700 NM to Panama City. The voyage was split in 2 parts, 1st Seattle - San Diego and 2nd San Diego - Panama City.  After the most important issues had been solved she left Seattle in 2012 with a crew of 4  destination San Diego.