Even with video gambling gone, business is slow on casino boats

Sunday, July 16, 2000 | 1:24 a.m.

"To be honest, business here isn't all that great," said Sam Gray, a soft-spoken former accounting professor owns the Stardancer, one of two gambling boats that sails from Little River.

With battles both legislative and logistical, operating a casino boat is a risky venture in South Carolina, said Gray, who also operates gambling cruises out of Miami and Fernandina Beach, Fla.

The House last year passed a bill that would have outlawed the so-called "cruises to nowhere," but that bill died because of differences with the Senate version. And Attorney General Charlie Condon has asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a Circuit Court judge's ruling that gambling cruises are legal despite a law that bans all gambling machines aboard boats.

"People get confused," Gray said. "They keep getting messages that the casino boats have been shut down. So people aren't going to come down from other places."

"Either of my other boats is at least as good as this one, and I don't have to jump through the hoops that I do here," he said.

Even when those hoops are cleared, it's no guarantee that gamblers will come.

Because of the time necessary to sail into international waters and back, a 5half -hour cruise yields only three hours of gambling. And to turn a steady profit, the cruises need lots of passengers.

A recent cruise on the Stardancer, which has stopped charging admission, attracted only 135 gamblers. The Sun Cruz VII, owned by Dewayne Williams, averages just 155 passengers per cruise. Both boats can carry up to 450 gamblers.

"It costs me $10,000 just to turn that boat loose to go out," Williams said. "If you don't have but 75 people on there, the chances of you getting that $10,000 back are very slim."

Williams said casino boat owners might have miscalculated when they put their boats near Myrtle Beach. "When we went there in 1998, we expected people to line up back to Highway 17," he said. "That did not happen," in part because Myrtle Beach tends to attract more family oriented tourism, and children are not allowed on the boats.

"Everybody in the gaming business thought Myrtle Beach was going to be tremendous because of the amount of tourism there," Williams said. "Well, nobody had experienced what Myrtle Beach has, and that's all the other things that draw people, all those restaurants, all those theaters."

Locals have mixed feelings about the boats and the clientele they attract.

The Little River Chamber of Commerce last year endorsed the gambling boat as a boon to the local economy.

"I have certainly seen my share of business from the boats, and I think that they're a good addition to the entertainment options in the community," said Shelli Patterson, manager of the Hampton Inn between Little River and neighboring Cherry Grove Beach.

But many Little River residents wish the boats would leave.

"Once the boats got here and the traffic picked up, we had people we'd never seen before walking through our neighborhood, walking through our yards," said Kathleen Bivens.