ORANGE BEACH, Ala. - The Alabama Gulf Coast Reef and Restoration Foundation has announced the LuLu, a 271-foot retired freighter, will be sunk as a reef on May 26.

"We will be sinking the LuLu on Sunday, May 26, 2013!" a Facebook post from the group said Monday afternoon. "Memorial Day weekend just got a lot bigger for the Alabama Gulf Coast.”

The weekend end will kick off with a re-christening/send-off party at LuLu’s on May 24.

The former Yokamu was bought by David Walter of Reef Makers in Orange Beach and towed to his business on the Intracoastal Waterway just west of The Wharf. Walter said he need $500,000 sink it as a reef.

The Alabama Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce then formed a committee to raise the money, the Gulf Coast Reef and Restoration Foundation.

Vince Lucido of Krebs Engineering in Orange Beach headed up that committee which ended up raising $650,000 for the project. The big donation came from Mac McAleer of LuLu’s restaurant who became the naming sponsor with a $250,000 donation.

The ship has since been called the LuLu. After months of study, the committee finally came up with the May 26 date.

“Well, it wasn’t during snapper season but it would give us enough time to put together some other things like the party barge and set up different things and get the T-shirts ordered,” Lucido said. “We didn’t want to put it too late in the summer. There will be a big crowd here and that’s one of the items that was a concern for the event so people can see it and look at it.”

The Friday night party will give the public the chance to see the big boat up close.

“We’re going to just park it down at the dock at LuLu’s so people can come down and look it over,” Lucido said. “We won’t let anybody get on it, but they can at least look at it and get next to it.”

Ed Rodriguez, President and CEO of the chamber, said several events will be planned about the sinking of the reef.

“We’re trying to come up with different things to make it more exciting,” Rodriguez said. “One of these things is to get schoolchildren involved. Maybe have an art contest.

“We’re going to do some things for business people to sponsor a logo on it, just get everybody involved and make this a community event.”

Lucido said the last task is securing the rest of the permits and finding just the right spot to sink the LuLu.

“We’ve got some areas located it’s just a matter of the final surveys, to do some scans, find some spots with sonar, look for other reefs,” he said. “We’ve got to survey some spots but that shouldn’t take but a couple of days. We can’t put it on a hard bottom. We can’t put it on any hard bottom because coral may be growing there.”

Lucido said the producers of the “Reef Wranglers” reality show have been notified of the date and will likely be in town to film the event. The Weather Channel recently aired four episodes on Walter’s business featuring him and three other locals.

The cast consisted of Walter, his son Stewart Walter, his stepson Justin Stoufflet, and Roger Strick of Reef Wranglers.

“The production company will probably come down and do some filming and they’ve been notified when we are going to do it,” he said. “We haven’t found out for sure if they are going to do some more of the series but I feel pretty confident that they will.”