The 137-foot Denis Sullivan — the world’s only replica of a 19th-century three-masted Great Lakes schooner — will soon be leaving the Great Lakes bound for Boston, MA. Milwaukee’s Discovery World has sold the schooner to World Ocean School, a nonprofit that will operate the ship year-round, according to Discovery World President and CEO Bryan Wunar. 

World Ocean School owns the 96-year-old schooner Roseway, which sails seasonally in Boston and St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. The nonprofit has officially taken ownership of the Denis Sullivan, with staff onsite to begin preparing it for its journey through the Great Lakes to Boston and eventually St. Croix. They hope to have it ready to begin that journey by early October.

Wunar told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal that it was a “hard decision” to sell the Sullivan, especially for board members who were involved in conceptualizing and building the ship. But in the end, they all agreed it was best for the Sullivan and Discovery World, after years of the museum struggling to pay for the ship’s maintenance and upkeep, exacerbated by a pandemic that closed the museum for a period and put a halt to sailing.

“We took this very seriously,” Wunar said. “And it has led to what I think is a really positive outcome. Because as of right now, we still didn’t have a crew here. … We weren’t sure if there would be a sailing season in 2023 and the fact that the Sullivan will be sailing before the end of 2022 is, I think, a big plus for being able to have the Sullivan operating fully again.”