Sea Lion Project

The Sea Lion Project was an ill-​fated, well meant, but stupid project to build a replica 16^th century British merchant ship that has evidently only gotten progressively dumber with the passage of time. Originally built to sail the waters of Lake Chautauqua, which is little more than an oversized pond having nearly half its waters too shallow to sail the ship plus the fact that at its widest point is only a mile in width, quickly lead to failure upon failure. Besides that, one can hardly imagine a square rig design meant to sail in trade or prevailing winds attempting any sort of sailing when having nothing but various cross wind big pond breezes.
After it’s sailing as well as financial failures on Lake Chautauqua it was hauled to the shores of Lake Erie in nearby Barcelona, New York, then on to Buffalo where, as proof of the entire project being ill conceived, it sank. It was raised in the year 2000, returned to Barcelona Harbor where it sits as nothing more than a deteriorating relic.
If you happen to be in Barcelona, New York, you can see it for yourself sitting on shore at Barcelona Harbor in the Town of Westfield, New York.
Since everyone behind this project meant well and dedicated a lot of their time and efforts towards it, I’d love to award more than One Star, but failure is failure, and the project itself amounts to little more than an unimpressive nothing.