(November 14, 2004) — For the first time since the Spirit of Ontario abruptly stopped running in early September, the founder and co-owner of the troubled high-speed ferry project sat down with the Democrat and Chronicle to talk about what happened.

Inside the offices of Canadian American Transportation Systems with the massive ship looming less than a hundred yards away in the Genesee River, Dominick Delucia admitted that the company made some mistakes, including starting the ferry service between Rochester and Toronto without enough reserve funds.

The Democrat and Chronicle talked Tuesday and Thursday with Delucia — a 41-year-old Victor, Ontario County, resident and former Wall Street trader who along with fellow Rochester-area native Brian Prince helped finance the project. CATS President Cornel Martin and two other employees also were present at points during the interviews. At various times, Delucia provided documentation to back up his points.

The following is a transcript, edited for clarity, of those questions and answers:

Q: Obviously something went wrong with this project, otherwise the ship wouldn't be sitting idle just outside this building. But talk about the positive aspects of the ferry project and CATS.

Delucia: The most tangible example of the positives is that magnificent vessel that carried — in essentially 80 days — almost 140,000 people. That has to be viewed against the backdrop of not only people saying that you'll only end up with three people some trips, but there were an awful lot of people even saying there wasn't even a boat being constructed. So I think that is the most tangible piece of what went very well.

Part and parcel to that, the vast majority of our riders walked away from their trip very happy, excited and refreshed, and that's what we were here for, to provide a quality service and a refreshing and exciting customer service.

Now, along with that, all of what you see in the port of Rochester would not have existed if it weren't for the arrival of the ferry. I think it's almost an understatement to say that the Port of Rochester or the Port of Charlotte, which it was called at the time, was tired and lifeless. Others would say probably more derogatory things about it prior to the arrival of the ferry.

Now you have a very vibrant area, particularly when the weather is halfway decent. Thousands of people were down here every day and there were many, many days that that parking lot was filled to the brim with cars and we couldn't fit another one in. It certainly has revitalized this area.

As well, I think the ferry project in and of itself has created an important profile for Rochester. We've been publicized as a community for a bold and daring venture around the country. I think the day the boat arrived were in somewhere around 45 newspapers around the country.

And it certainly brought a profile to Rochester. There are those who might say it came at the cost of negative publicity, but I believe in my heart that when you take some innovative and bold and daring steps, people always look at you and there will be some section of naysayers, but most people are going to look at you and say, if they are from other parts of the country, "Hey, isn't that innovative and isn't that something we should be doing in our community."

I think overall it's been quite good for the community and positive.

I think we've all learned as a community a very valuable lesson from it. The most valuable of those lessons is that political divisiveness and political infighting can cost you an awful lot of time and money and energy, and in projects like this, that do require the entire community coming together to create a successful project, you can't afford that kind of loss of energy, time and money.

We, as a community, now have an opportunity. We are at a crossroads. Do we come together and eliminate all the divisiveness, in every sense of the phrase come together and pull together, or do we continue the divisiveness that has plagued this community for a long time?

You know I'm a big football fan. My son always asks me if I have a favorite team and I tell him that I really don't have a favorite team. I just like to watch football. Well, who do you root for? I usually root for the underdog in the game. I usually for the guy who's coming from behind. We need to come from behind on this one. And I think there are a lot of people who are like that and are rooting for this organization to do so.

Q: What are you most proud of?

Delucia: I'm extremely proud of the people that are sitting here with you now. The people who have hung in there through thick and thin and could have been out there doing jobs that were maybe more low-profile and nondescript and certainly would have allowed them to sleep a lot easier at night and work a lot fewer hours.

The management team at CATS has done a tremendous job, not only while the boat was operating but particularly the last two months to try to resurrect service.

I'm also proud of the fact that the management team and founders created essentially an international border crossing in a post-9/11 era and I don't think that's inconsequential in any way.

I am proud of the fact that the project has brought some significant profile to Rochester and we've proven with some hard work a substantial portion of the community can come together to get things done.

Q: Why is the ship not sailing now? What happened?

Delucia: The reasons are just the symptoms of the overall illness which was ... a financial problem. We started out asking for ... $20 million in government assistance and that was a part of the overall, at the time, $62 million project. ... We were looking for $10 million from the U.S. side and $10 million from the Canadian side. Where we ended up in August of 2002 was ... the state of New York doing more than their fair share in coming up with $14 million in grants and loans, along with $1.3 million from the city of Rochester. But we came up short in Canada.

So what you have, relative to our original plan and our original business model, a $4.7 million shortfall right off the bat. Now at the time, I was very clear to say that this money could get us started but the project would be much stronger if we could secure more money from Canada.

When you distill it right down, this is a transportation project and transportation projects usually have a ramp-up period ... but you do need to have reserves in these projects. It's warranted to do so and prudent to do so. We went in with the idea that we needed reserves, but frankly we just came up short in Canada.

Q: Why was that?

Delucia: It wasn't due to a lack of effort. I don't know. It could be that Toronto is a very big city and even though this project was endorsed by city council it didn't have the right champion at the city of Toronto at the time. It could be that Canadian government assistance just doesn't flow like U.S. government assistance. It could be that we weren't politically savvy enough in Canada. I don't know. Whatever it was, we were unable to secure that money.

What we did do, we were able to bring this project up to a level of attention that was pretty impressive. We have been to many of the members of parliament and many of the ministers. And if you recall the prime minister, Paul Martin, choose as a backdrop to his announcement of funding for the Toronto waterfront our boat to stand in front of and talk glowingly about it.

That's a source of pride. When was the last time a G8 leader of the world stood around talking about a project in Rochester, New York? It hasn't happened in a long time, I think.

Q: Why didn't CATS seek more private financing to fill the $4.7 million gap before starting the ferry?

Delucia: It's very simple. Other than the principals who put money in this project, there was no one willing to take the risk and put money into this project. We were the only risk capital available.

Why? It's the same reason that no outside developers generally want to come and do real estate projects in Rochester. They don't understand the market. They think Rochester is a second- or third-tier city. The cost of coming up to speed on these projects is a high cost. We were the only guys who had enough local knowledge and had enough incentive, both financial and social incentive to get it done.

Remember, some guy who's looking at this project purely on the basis of the numbers [will conclude] more than likely the risk is not worth the reward. Well, the rewards can be great. Everyone has always known in this project — and we've never made it a secret whether through conversations with private financiers or public officials — if you're looking for risk in this project, you're going to find it.

Let's back up. Think about how many sectors of the economy or world events can affect a project like this.

Start out with the threat of terror around our nation that has affected this project greatly because of the need for security and matters like that. SARS affected this project dramatically and still affected our ridership. Toronto tourism was still down even though SARS had been eradicated for over a year.

Fuel prices. Think about that. General economic conditions would affect us. Weather affects us. Because you are subject to so many things that most other businesses are not susceptible to, because we were so susceptible to all of them, there was an undeniable risk in the project and that's why you couldn't just go out and make up that $4.7 million at the drop of a hat.

If it was that easy to do that, you would have far more than four passing bids at the original RFP and only one real bid in the end.

Q: So why did you then, with all the risks, invest in the project?

Delucia: I had what I think is a better base of knowledge than other people who might be interested in a project like this. What do I mean by that?

I know having lived in Rochester growing up as a kid for 18 years and having moved back here a couple of different times, I know there is a vibrant community here that other people would want to sample.

So when you go down to New York City and you pitch a ferry project, the first thing that somebody might say is why would somebody want to go to Rochester. Well, I already know those all those reasons. So I had some specialized information. I also had some individual information because I had been going to Toronto for a long time and I know how difficult that trip can be and I would bet that other people would feel the same.

And I think that our numbers have clearly proven that. Not only our numbers, but the exit poll — if you will — of people getting off the boat saying, "I will never drive again."

Not only that specialized information, but the whole concept of God, greed and glory. Everything that everyone does has some measure of all of them. Well, this is a pretty important project and you can really make a meaningful impact on this community over the long term by launching it and successfully running it.

Q: People may not realize that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks affected the ferry project. Talk about that issue.

Delucia: It affected our ability to raise capital. Remember, I may have had a different answer to your question about "why not go out and get another $4.7 million" if 9/11 hadn't happened. We started working with the four parties on the (project) prior to 9/11. We started working at the beginning of 2000.

It was a much different transportation finance environment at that point than it was post-9/11. As we all know, the world changed in very dramatic ways. So 9/11 affected all of us in so many ways that we're not even conscious of. It affected us financially because of the inability of us to raise private capital. It probably affected the public sector as well because they may have been more forthcoming with financial capital if 9/11 hadn't occurred. It certainly affected our bottom line from a security standpoint. It also affected people from a psychological standpoint. We put in a lot of time, effort and energy with the public safety bodies that this was a very safe ride. It's an icon.

I'm sure in the back of some people's mind that "I'm crossing into another country and am I really safe." We did all we could to make sure that was not the case. But still, I think there was some psychological effect on people in general when you step on a plane and when you step on this boat.

Q: Now talk about the bad luck that this project has experienced, including the accident in New York City and the engine troubles.

Delucia: To use that old cliché, if we had no bad luck, we'd have no luck at all.

I was talking to a guy last night and I was telling him this story and he apologized to me because he was howling with laughter. And he said I've never heard such a bad-luck story. How does all that happen?

You start a project before 9/11 and you have to bring it to fruition after 9/11. You start a project before anybody had a clue that an illness called SARS existed and then it's thrown in your face. You expect that on such a seemingly important project that political differences wouldn't get in the way, but you have the bad luck of political struggles invariably leaking in.

You have the bad luck of changes in regulations. The fact that we could not carry trucks on this thing was not expected but it is certainly understandable. Recognize the bad luck we had in launching service right around the same time that (U.S.) Customs was moving under Homeland Security, was merging with another big bureaucracy in INS, and getting new port regulations thrust upon them in July of '04. This all happened within a two-month period of our start.

Of course, there is going to be some confusion about the rules that apply. So when I express the understandable frustration of not being able to carry trucks, it's not frustration with any of our elected officials nor even frustration with the people within Customs, because I think they all have tried to be helpful. My frustration is with the bad luck and the bad timing that has happened.

And then if you move through the bad luck or poor planning of that crash in New York City. ... Even had that event taken place one day earlier or one day later, it would have been less bad luck than occurring on April Fool's Day. That's almost the exclamation point on bad luck, isn't it?

Then the bad luck of the engines needing a complete overhaul modification. Only knowing that 10 minutes before pulling into the harbor for the first time. Did you know that? We didn't know. There was some suspicion that there might have been some problem on the delivery voyage over, but they didn't really know until they blew the last head gasket 10 minutes outside the harbor.

If you could change one, maybe two of the factors, we'd more than likely still be in operation today. Certainly if we had secured $20 million instead of $15.3 million, we'd be in operation today.

Certainly if we had started on May 1 instead of June 18 and we didn't have the anchor weighing us down of all that bad publicity of the crash and the engine modifications, we'd still be operating back and forth today. I could continue on, but if you change any one or two of those factors, we'd be in pretty good shape.

Q: Many people are now playing Monday morning quarterback and saying the business plan was flawed. Who developed the plan and do you, in hindsight, believe it was flawed?

Delucia: During the (request for proposal) process, there was a study provided to us by the four parties (Rochester, Toronto, Monroe County and Toronto Port Authority) and the study was done by a group out of Virginia. And they had the core of the business model in there.

Further studies were done as this project progressed, but every other study projected higher ridership than this original one. So what CATS did was to take this lowest study in terms of ridership and build the model around that, using the pricing methodology that was gathered in this study, using the cost structure that was produced and augmenting it with our real world examples. And using their market sector approach because he had done some significant studies.

By the market sector approach, I mean you not only have passengers on this, but you have significant amount of car traffic you expect to pull off the road and truck traffic you expect to pull off the road. It was always contemplated that all of those items made up the leg of the stool.

When people say that the business model was flawed, I still do not believe that. We carried 140,000 passengers in essentially 80 days from a dead standstill.

You've been covering the story long enough you know that those first three or so weeks were horrendous. because we were still trying to overcome all the bad publicity from the crash and the engine modifications. We had our own hydraulic problems that reared its ugly head and engine problems that sprang up in the first few weeks. We had to cancel some sailings. But after that, the ridership increased very steadily and at the end very dramatically.

Any business model that you present or that you develop cannot account for factors outside of your control, other than to create reserves in case of a rainy day. And as you well know, some of the events were outside our control, fuel prices, pilotage costs, inability to carry trucks. What else? Canada customs fees.

Q: Some people who I've talked with don't believe that you shut down the ship because of financial concerns.

Delucia: There are some people who you talk to who still don't believe there's a boat here.

Q: Those people believe that the shutdown was a negotiating tactic to get your way with government officials. Was it a negotiating ploy?

Delucia: I can assure you that if we did not have to shut this thing down for financial reasons we would not have shut it down. It was not a negotiating tactic. A far better negotiating tactic would have been to never start the service until all the problems were cleared up.

And I think that anyone you talk to with this project would say that's not our style.

Q: Despite the outstanding issues, you started the service anyway. Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. admits that there was public and political pressure on you to start the service as soon as possible. How intense was that pressure?

Delucia: It was as intense an experience as I've ever been through. The pressure to close this transaction was nothing short of tremendous.

There were those inside this company, as the mayor has said, that felt that we shouldn't necessarily start service as of a particular date but we should start it right. And by right, I mean when all the problems were solved and all promises were kept. But yet we started it without those promises being kept. And quite frankly, we were given assurances that, "Look if you get this project up and running, people will love the service and if you need some more money and you run into some hard times, you'll get it. We'll find it together. This is a partnership."

Indeed the mayor has said in City Newspaper and in conversations with you that there was a lot of pressure to close the transaction to get service under way.

Q: While acknowledging that you did a good job of putting together the ferry deal and delivered a ship, many former CATS employees, political leaders and passengers question whether CATS is the right operator for this service because of the problems. What's your reaction to that?

Delucia: Those people just need more information. If those folks think that any ferry operator around the world or any local businessman could control war, terror, fuel prices any better than we could, then they are not living in the real world.

The measuring stick for whether or not CATS is capable of operating this ferry or worthy of operating this ferry is did the ferry run well, did it run on time and were people happy with the service along with that, did CATS do what it could do to reasonably control its costs and manage its revenue streams.

I think this management team did an outstanding job of doing all of those things. I think that our senior lenders would agree that there probably isn't anybody in the world who could have done a remarkably better job than this management team did.

And the management team made mistakes. It's indisputable the management team made mistakes. But could it possibly been expected that the management team wouldn't have made mistakes? It's a pioneering service. It's never been done before. You didn't have a template to look at. You didn't have a diagram to go off of.

It was created from scratch. So how could a few mistakes not have been made?

Let's take an example of a mistake that was made. Our call center. We clearly underestimated the number of calls that would come into our call center. We expected that a lot of people in the Internet age would use the Internet.

But for this particular project, for some reason, and it may change over time as people get more comfortable with the process, a lot people like to call and they like to ask questions and our phone lines were clogged. But once we figured that out, we solved the problem.

So yeah, we made a mistake but we solved it.

Another mistake that we made is we had, for the sake of security and keeping some integrity in the system, we had our computer servers that managed our ticketing and reservation systems out in Victor. Well, the T1 lines were getting clogged, which is why our ticketing bogged down for the first couple of weeks. You know what we did. We moved the servers right here and we no longer needed to flow that information through the T1 lines... and now it had gone off without a hitch for two months straight.

There are natural growing pains that a new company goes through and you don't know what those pains are until you get into it.

Q: Do you have any regrets in terms of what could have been done better or differently?

Delucia: In hindsight, we would have staffed up with 50 call center people We would have had our T1 lines in-house to begin with. We would have insisted that the shipbuilder take a direct route to Rochester instead of stopping in New York City. We would have gone through far further testing of the engine.

What else could we have done differently? We could have not started service until pilotage and customs and things like that were cleared up. But remember, we didn't even know that trucking was a problem until we went to put trucks on. We thought we were secure and Cornel (Martin) will show you a couple of letters from customs.

People misconstrue our situation with pilotage and trucks as some sort of criticism of the federal government. The fact is that in order to solve our pilotage problem we needed to reflag the vessel. In order to reflag the vessel, that process usually takes over two years. The best guess is 2½ years. With the help of (Sen. Charles) Schumer, (Sen. Hillary Rodham) Clinton and (Rep. Louise) Slaughter, we got it essentially 99.9 percent done in 90 days. We worked this thing at lightning speed. So nobody lay down on these issues. They were just issues that needed to be solved.

Q: Slaughter has offered some criticism of the ferry project, noting that her office had to work on some issues on an emergency basis when they should have been taken care of well in advance of the ship sailing.

Delucia: We had been working on the pilotage issue in well excess of a year before the ship sailed. There was a case to be made that there should have been no pilotage at all. There certainly is a case to be made because the director of Great Lakes Pilotage said we wouldn't be charged for docking and undocking, which would have eliminated at least two-thirds of the charge.

Martin: They had estimated that the cost would have been $1,500 a day and it ended up being between $5,000 and $6,000.

Delucia: Nothing was done on an emergency basis. We were working on it for well over a year. But we got ruled against and the game changed right at the end. Right at the end, they said, "You have to pay for docking and undocking despite that you have a letter saying that you don't have to pay for docking and undocking."

So that's the pilotage issue. As far as the trucking issue goes, the parties to the RFP provided us a business plan and the business plan said that you need trucks to make this business model come to its fullest value. This terminal you're sitting in was designed with that in mind. Then you've got letters from U.S. Customs prior to the onset of service that all approvals are in place. I'm not taking any shots at customs because they had their own challenges. But the fact is that we didn't even know that trucking had any issues attached to it prior to launching service. Otherwise we would have been working on it.

I'll tell you where we did fall down and where we made no progress whatsoever was the Canada customs issue. We just couldn't get it done. Despite herculean efforts we could not get it done. (Delucia and others insist promises were made that the customs fees would be eliminated.)

In all of life and in business, you will never get any business done and you'll never get anywhere in your life unless you take people on most occasions on their word. Unfortunately, a lot of promises made in this project remain either broken or very delayed.

Take the Toronto terminal, for example. Mayor Johnson has been in the past harshly critical in the way the terminal transpired. It was not a pleasant experience for our clients and our guests to go into the Toronto terminal. That will change because steel is in the ground now.

Toronto, you take the back steps. You're walking along cars as you travel along the vehicle ramp. It created not only a difficult situation for our guests, but it created a difficult situation for our turnaround times. We couldn't get comfortable with the idea that we would be able to turn around quickly enough to do three trips a day on a consistent basis. And a third round trip a day would have added a lot of additional revenue for us. That's what the business model said.

Now, was the business model flawed by our believing and taking the Toronto Port Authority at their word that there would have been a proper ferry terminal built? I don't consider that a flaw in the business model. If the Toronto terminal had been built, we'd be running three round trips a day and we might not be in the spot we're in right now.

Q: But when you announced the ferry wouldn't make three trips a day as planned, CATS said the reason was not enough people were interested in late evening trips from Toronto.

Martin: That was one of the reasons cited, but it was also the delays in turning over the vessel. There were a number of delays that led to that conclusion.

Q: So why didn't the Toronto Port Authority have a permanent ferry facility constructed to begin with?

Delucia: I don't know. Part of their reason is they ran into their own customs bureaucracy up there. Customs was working hard to design the right facility and the proper facility and that bogged them down. That's the only reason I can think of.

Q: How important is gambling to the future of the ferry project?

Delucia: I would think that at this point it would be very important to at least consider another revenue source for the project.

Q: Why?

Delucia: Is this a trick question? (laughs)

Q: But why is gaming important to the future?

Delucia: I think it would be an additional source of revenue. And whether we like it as a society or not, gaming draws people and the whole object of this project was to open up Rochester to foreign visitors and gaming is a factor.

Q: Has the public and media scrutiny that CATS and the ferry project faced been fair?

Delucia: I believe it is very fair to scrutinize the project but oftentimes it is the criticism that has been unfair because people have been criticizing without knowing much of the real story. I don't think the scrutiny is unfair. But I think lots of the criticism of the staff and management around here have been unfair.

As you can see I'm a little protective of the folks who have made this happen.

Q: The Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority raised serious questions about this project two years ago. And Chairman Bill Nojay recently said that you were misleading and secretive during negotiations with that agency to serve as a pass-through for a $6.6 million state loan. What's your reaction to that?

Delucia: The RGRTA existed as a conduit in this project for a State Infrastructure Bank loan. The lead agency negotiating this was not the RGRTA. It was the State Infrastructure Bank.

So we were very, very open with the State Infrastructure Bank, as evidenced by the governor himself.

My understanding of the alarms that Mr. Nojay was sounding is that we didn't have the financing lined up for this project. That's what he was saying. The fact that the boat sits behind you is evidence that we had all the financing lined up that we said we had. So history has borne that out.

Now, if Mr. Nojay was skeptical if we could make it financially or if we would have enough riders, that's something that was never talked about at that time. Really, it was "Do you have the money to launch the project."

Frankly, I don't think Bill Nojay disliked this project. I think there was a political tussle going on and we just happened to get caught in the middle of it.

There are people out there who are smart and politically savvy who will look me in the face and say, "Of course you got caught in the middle of it and you should have expected to get caught in the middle of it. This is a high-profile project and people are going to be fighting over what it means and (the) credit." But the degree is something we were not prepared for.

Q: Do you think the ferry is going to be back in operation?

Delucia: Yes.

Q: Is there a "when" or a timetable?

Delucia: I can't comment on that.

Q: Who are the new investors?

Delucia: I can't comment on that.

The reason I can't comment is because we've been asked by the city of Rochester to remain quiet.

Q: Are you concerned about consumer confidence in the ferry when it returns?

Delucia: I think that restoring any public confidence that may have been lost is something that we have to keep our eye on and work toward. I am confident that if there has been any lost we can restore it. Particularly when you write this story, if they give you enough inches, people who read this story are going to say, "Yeah I understand." And the people who have ridden the boat are going to say, "Yeah, now I understand the finances more and I can't wait to get back on."

I think the public will come back because they recognize that CATS had set out to bring a boat here when no one else would or could and CATS set out to run a consistent, quality, enjoyable service and that's exactly what we did. We ran into a bunch of bad luck along the way and we made a bunch of mistakes that are natural in the startup process. But even if you had changed even a little bit of that bad luck, you'd be looking at a different story. You'd be writing a different story.

Q: I was told that the Passport to Savings program was not successful.

Delucia: Passport to Savings was moderately successful. the problem with Passport to Savings was not from a marketing standpoint. The problem was it created a lot of logistical issues for us, particularly at the ticket counter.

That I personally could have thought through better. So Passport to Savings wasn't unsuccessful from a marketing standpoint. It was burdensome from an operations standpoint.

Q: What about the folks who still have those passes?

Delucia: Yes, we will make arrangements to make them all redeemable.

Martin: It's important to note here, too, that the gift certificates are in the same category. It's our intent to extend those for whatever period we were out of service. So they will still be good for an "x" number of months to make up for the temporary suspension.

Q: What mistakes did you make personally?

Delucia: We all have our own personalities and some people refuse to compromise and there are others like me who live their life trying to create harmony and compromise all the way through.

It's been one of my better strengths over my life is to compromise and see the other side and live with the little bit of sting that comes from having to compromise. But in this project, it was probably my greatest weakness. Because there were times when we should not have compromised.

We should have not compromised with regard to funding or participation from those who had made promises and were either unwilling to fulfill them or were unable to fulfill them.

Q: How has this project affected you personally, considering the amount of public criticism directed your way?

Delucia: It's been the most exhausting experience of my life. Five straight years. Lots of 18-hour days. But in the end, I know that it will be worth it for our community. For the people involved in this organization.

Q: What has been the low point and high point of this project?

Delucia: I think you're looking at the low point right now. The high point is yet to come. Because the high point is going to be the satisfaction of seeing most if not all of this community come together to make this project a success.

Look on the trucking side, we've already had people come to us and say, "Look, we just want to be helpful and let's just try it and see how it works out. We're not going to dicker on price. We're just going to do it. That's a breath of fresh air. We walk arm in arm with you."

I can assure you that those people who step up right now will never be forgotten by this organization and the people who have stepped up only to get their own criticism and stepped up for us before, certain business leaders and thought leaders in the community who probably took some criticism for it.

Q: The company has said it was in a $2 million hole when the service started, but during the three months in operation you were able to reduce the debt to $1.7 million. If you were making money, why shut down the service?

Delucia: (He declined to comment before talking with other financial officials at the company to verify the figures. In a follow-up phone call, he stated that CATS had run out of money and "we had run out of clock.")

Q: There are many unhappy people who purchased tickets and many unhappy vendors who have been unable to contact the company since the shutdown and feel CATS has been unresponsive to their complaints. What do you want to say to them?

Delucia: Just like you saw me get protective of the management of this company. I'm also protective of those people who helped us along the way. And those are the vendors and the people who rode the ferry and the people who bought tickets and I'm trying to do everything I can to satisfy all of those parties.

And I know that management is trying to do the same thing.

Q: But do you understand their frustration?

Delucia: Absolutely. And again, I will do everything that I can to try and make them happy and get back to a good spot.

Q: Some people have suggested that the state Attorney General's Office or the state Comptroller's Office come in and investigate the company. Would you be opposed to that?

Delucia: We'd be happy to provide any documentation that we need to provide to either of those parties, financial statements, things like that. We've had our own auditors in here. There's nothing to hide here.

Q: It's common in the business world if someone steps down as president or CEO of a company that they are compensated. People are wondering whether you came away with a "golden parachute" when you stepped aside as president and chairman in July and went back to being owner and founder. Were you compensated?

Delucia: No.

Q: Why not?

Delucia: First of all, it was never a thought. Secondly, I've always been involved in this business under the idea that for my efforts I was going to do everything I could to make this company as financially strong as possible and that meant never, ever having drawn a paycheck out of this place.

We have always tried to structure this business so that the only way the shareholders could win was if the community won right alongside of us with a successful project.

Q: Why do you think there's this perception in the community?

Delucia: I can't speculate to why that is.

Q: Did you or Brian Prince receive any compensation or fee from Austal Ships for the purchase the ship?

Delucia: We have never received any income from this operation. It's very simple.

Q: Is CATS' relationship with EFIC, ABN AMRO and Austal Ships strained?

Delucia: Anytime you run into a financial difficulty you get strained relationships. It's part and parcel of the process. I think we have a strong working relationship given the difficult circumstances we're under.

Martin: Clearly in all of my conversations with EFIC (the Australian-based financial backer, Export and Finance Insurance Corp,), everybody is working toward the same goal and that's getting the ferry back up and running again to keep the ferry here in Rochester and make the ferry successful. EFIC has been very supportive in acknowledging that they want to do that and we want to do that and everyone is on the same page.