Coos Bay is a straight shot.

It's about 400 nautical miles from San Francisco to the port of Coos Bay.

It would save money to tow mothballed military vessels north from Suisun Bay, Calif., to Oregon. The only other places taking them now are shipyards in Brownsville, Texas. While there's no ship recycling facility in Oregon, companies are scouting for sites here and elsewhere in the country.

With no commercial West Coast ship dismantling facilities, the vessels at Suisun Bay have the farthest to go. These ships don't sail under their own power. They are towed to the their final destination.

Once that vessel is under way out of Suisun Bay, it's out of the U.S. Maritime Administration's hands. The risks associated with towing and cutting up the vessel become the responsibility of the contractors.

It's a long journey from San Francisco Bay down past Baja, alongside Mexico, day after day. Past the coasts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, before cutting across the 51-mile-long Panama Canal. And still on, past Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, up the coast of Mexico. There, a ship slides into a dismantling slip on the border at Brownsville, ending a 5,292 nautical-mile journey.

Shouldering liability

Right up front, MARAD contracts say the government will be held harmless in the event of losses, damages, accidents and injuries. Ship recycling and tow companies shoulder that risk the moment they hook up a vessel.

The ship disposal contract requires a company to carry insurance, covering up to $5 million per incident, according to MARAD documents. Ship recyclers must have a $500,000 performance bond on first-time companies and bonds of lesser amounts for experienced shipbreakers. Bonding would cover unpaid expenses for companies that don't complete the jobs.

Whenever possible, MARAD requires towing vessels to have been U.S. Coast Guard inspected or carry safety certification. Tow companies must have plans for dealing with oil spills and ballast water transfers.

“Ocean towing is a substantial problem,” said Werner Hoyt a project manager for Petaluma, Calif.-based Marine Survey and Management.

The ships are valuable scrap-metalwise, but they also can carry thousands of gallons of residual fuels and oils, along with hazardous materials.

That doesn't mean Hoyt and his partners turn down the jobs. Over the past 10 years, Marine Survey has towed 57 vessels for the government - civilian and military ships - out of places such as San Francisco, Washington's Puget Sound and Suisun Bay.

But the older ships can bring bigger challenges.

As many as 18 vessels in MARAD's Suisun Bay inventory are 1940s era. Hoyt said that in two recent tows of vessels that age from Suisun Bay to Brownsville, surveys showed the rivets heads on the hull had completely corroded away.

That becomes a problem in heavy seas, when a ship is pitching and working its way over the waves, he said. The hull begins to flex. Its seams begin to split, there can be flooding.

“Both vessels were very fortunate. They hit calm weather all the way,” he said.

Hoyt, who's a registered engineer, said his company has turned down tow jobs in the past, opting just not to bid on vessels that make his company apprehensive.

“There is no room for mistakes these days,” Hoyt said.

Ebb and flow of ships

For MARAD officials, it's a race of sorts. From 1994 to 2001, ship disposal stopped with the ban on exporting ships containing hazardous materials to overseas shipbreakers. The inventory built up. Faced with fears mothballed ships might cause ecological disasters, particularly in Virginia's James River, Congress wanted all mothballed ships eliminated by fall 2006.

With a $10 million shot of money in 2001, MARAD officials stepped up vessel recycling. In its 2002 report to Congress, the agency listed 133 vessels deemed non-retention. Currently, there are 113 such vessels, according to the 2005 report.

The agency says it has awarded 72 contracts to ship recyclers since 2001. Not all the ships have been dismantled. But not only is MARAD in a race to offload ships, it's also in a safety game, making sure it gets rid of the vessels in the worst condition first.

“We don't have ships in the same conditions they were in the James River,” said MARAD's Shannon Russell.

In 2000, the agency became embroiled in controversy after oil leaked from two ships anchored in an inactive fleet in Virginia. Those vessels were quickly removed, Russell said. Since, MARAD has taken the highest-risk vessels out of the mothballed fleet. But one study suggests mothballed ships, particularly 1940s era vessels, are in bad shape.

The hull story

The U.S. Department of Defense paid for a 2003 study to evaluate one ship environmentally and structurally. It was done through the National Environmental Education and Training Center Inc. Originally, the goal was to inspect a Suisun Bay vessel representative of the Victory Class ships in the reserve fleet.

“... but that request for access and cooperation was lost in a bureaucratic maze,” wrote co-author John E. Gibbons in the study's preface.

The Victory Class vessels were produced in 1944-45 for the World War II effort, though most never saw service for decades. As of December 2005, there were 21 vessels from that decade in the Suisun Bay fleet. There are nine remaining Victory ships, according to MARAD documents.

Ultimately, Gibbons, an industrial consultant, partnered with Hoyt on the study. They studied the SS Red Oak Victory, which is on display in Richmond, Calif. The vessel, which served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, had come from the Suisun Bay fleet. It was deemed the “pick of the litter,” Gibbons wrote.

Crews climbed aboard. The survey goal was twofold. First, Hoyt, who had worked in ship recycling, wanted to quantify the wastes and recyclables aboard ship. Second, they wanted a detailed picture of the ship's condition.

They analyzed design drawings, measured piping and sampled paints and other materials. They surveyed hull deterioration.

The study called for a complete structural survey of all reserve fleet vessels to determine ships' condition and environmental risks. It recommended against towing any Victory Class ships without structural repairs. The major area of concern was a 1-foot-wide rusting blister line that ran the entire length of the ship above the water line. The study found the hull corroding, with up to 80 percent thinning. Such conditions could lead to hull spall in pounding in a heavy sea, the report warned.

“If left uncontrolled this would cause partial flooding or in worst case sink the ship,” the report said.

MARAD officials say they have never seen the study. And though the agency has never done a major study on hull conditions, staff continually assess the vessels' conditions, Russell said. They have started taking hull measurements, and an electrical or cathotic protection system is in place to slow corrosion of hulls.

“The ships that we have still in the fleet today are considered to be in better condition than ships we had in our custody in prior years,” Russell said.