ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Will the stern sink first like planned? Will she develop leaks? Will all those pumps work if she does? Will the seas cooperate and stay below the three-foot limit?

David Walter has a million thoughts going through his mind as his company, Walter Marine, prepares to send the LuLu to the bottom to become a reef on Sunday.

This odyssey began for him when he bought the 271-foot Yokamu and had it hauled up from Fort Lauderdale in June to his place on the Intracoastal Waterway in Orange Beach. His intent all along was to sink as a reef, hopefully in Alabama waters.

Sunday just might be the culmination of those hopes as he and his crew prepare the ship, renamed the LuLu, for sinking in the Gulf about 17 miles south of Perdido Pass.

Until then a lot of preliminary work, a lot of planning and a lot of worry.

“It’s really involved because we want to sink the stern first,” Walter said. “We want the stern to go down and hit the bottom and then the bow will sink down. We don’t want the ship to roll over on its side.”

To make that happen, crew members will be on board the LuLu to pull plugs at strategic places and times to hope it sinks as planned.

“The trick is to get all of the parts of the ship, get the air out of them and the water in them while it’s sinking in a succession where it doesn’t sink bow first, but where it sinks stern first,” Walter said.

On one hand, it’s pretty complicated. On the other, it’s not.

“It’s a lot of guess work and a lot of scratching my head as far as guessing,” Walter said with a laugh. “That’s the best we can do right now.”

If all goes as planned, that journey will start today when the LuLu is hauled to LuLu’s in Gulf Shores at 9 a.m. At about 1 p.m. it will be rechristened by Mac McAleer, the naming sponsor who contributed $250,000 to the project.

At 3 p.m. Walter and crew will begin moving it west to Mobile Bay.

“It’s going to be about a 20-hour run for us,” Walter said. “We’ll have lots of pumps and people on the boat communicating with us in case something goes wrong and we have to know what we are going to do about it.

“There are lots of pumps in case it starts taking on water on the way out there. It leaks a little bit but we’ve got it to where it’s not too bad. We’ve got those paths blacked off.”

If seas are three feet or better, that could complicate matters even more.

“If it’s over three feet we’d have to postpone it,” he said Tuesday. “Its two to three forecast and a wind out of the east. It’s never a good wind that blows out of the east. We’ll know by Friday.”

On the day of the sinking, planned for Sunday, the ship and crews will be on the site quite early.

“What we’ll do is we’ll get it out there in the right position and anchor it,” Walter said. “We’ll have to wait until noon to sink it. We’ll get there first light, get the ship anchored up and get it on the right position. Then we’ll get on it.”

Crew members will go to work on the LuLu for the last time and begin letting the water in to claim it for a reef.

“This is not something that’s done all at once,” Walter said. “We have holes on the side of the ship that we have plywood plugs over and we take those off.”

Then, Walter said, begins the hoping part. As in hoping the plan works and she sinks like he wants her to.

“Water starts coming in and we’ll probably stay on the ship for a little while to make sure it’s flooding properly and everything’s going right,” he said. “Not that there’s anything we can do about it. Just keep an eye on it and see what’s going on.”

At a certain point, crews will head back to the work boat to watch the sinking. Walter estimates anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours for the boat to go under.

“When the ship starts to get low on the stern, we’ll get off the boat,” he said.

Walter says it makes for a long day and long weekend, but he won’t be catching any cat naps during the process.

“I won’t be getting a lot of sleep until it’s on the bottom and then I’ll be relaxed after that,” he said.