Old Commercial Boat’s Materials Dropped On Reef Site

OCEAN CITY — Just a week after the dilapidated “New Hope,” a fixture on the West Ocean City commercial harbor landscape for years, was dismantled, much of its steel and salvageable material found its new home on the ocean floor at the Bob Gower Artificial Reef site this week.

Last week, Captain Jeremiah Kogon and the crew on the MV Iron Lady meticulously dismantled the old New Hope, a 70-foot commercial vessel scuttled for years along the bulkhead at the commercial harbor in West Ocean City. Most of the sinking vessel, which had been half-submerged at the harbor for several years, was not salvageable and was ultimately hauled to the landfill, but much of its steel superstructure was stacked neatly on the deck of the MV Iron Lady for future deployment on the Bob Gower Artificial Reef site just miles off the coast of the resort.

With clear weather and calm seas this week, the MV Iron Lady, with the assistance of the Ocean City Artificial Reef Foundation and the Morning Star with Captain Monty Hawkins, began methodically dropping the tons of steel and other material on the Bob Gower reef site, named for the late, beloved captain who trolled the waters around the resort area for decades before his passage in 2011.

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