As early as the middle of next week, the fate of the Falls of Clyde could be settled, with a community group taking over the 128-year-old ship that has graced Honolulu Harbor for more than four decades.

Provided the Friends of the Falls of Clyde group gets a drydock plan in place and has proof of insurance, the proposed transfer of ownership will go before the board of the Bishop Museum's Maritime Center for a vote Thursday.

"We continue the negotiations," Tim Johns, Bishop Museum president and chief executive officer, said yesterday. "We still need things from the Friends. Assuming the group gets everything to us and the board approves it, then we'll have an agreement."

The Maritime Center had planned to sink the decrepit four-masted ship but some members of the community banded together about two months ago to try to save it.

The national historic landmark is owned by the Bishop Museum, which recently stripped the ship of its masts and rigging in preparation for sinking it 15 miles off Honolulu Harbor.

The ship had also been saved from scuttling in the 1950s and arrived in Honolulu in 1963. It was restored and put on display in 1971 at Pier 5 in Honolulu Harbor.

Longtime Honolulu Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss was instrumental in that effort. He campaigned through his columns and in person to bring the ship to Hawai'i and contributed thousands of dollars of his own money to help restore and save the ship. Krauss died in 2006.

The museum spends several hundred thousand dollars a year on insurance, labor costs and supplies to maintain the ship, which has been closed to the public since last year.

Last month, the museum said it could no longer bear those costs.

The Friends group is registering as a nonprofit organization and plans to meet Monday with state Department of Transportation officials about drydocking plans.