Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum plans to give the World War II destroyer Laffey a new berth in Mount Pleasant, a move museum officials say will end an expensive routine every time the ship needs major repairs.

The Patriots Point Development Authority’s board approved a plan to move the ship to the other side of the main pier that leads to the aircraft carrier Yorktown, The Post and Courier reported Oct. 27.

The Laffey’s current berth was built in the 1980s for the submarine Clamagore and was never well suited to the larger destroyer, according to the newspaper. It fills with sediment from Charleston Harbor and has to be dredged. Maintenance Director David Coates told the board Oct. 16 that broken and aging pilings need to be addressed and the mooring system needs upgrades to withstand hurricanes, the newspaper reported. Coates called the berth the “bane of our existence.”

To free the ship, crews must remove about 60 feet of the pier’s roadway and disconnect utilities beneath it that serve the museum and part of the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina. Officials estimate each opening and closing costs about $250,000, not counting revenue lost while the museum closes for about two weeks, the newspaper reported. Under the earlier plan to upgrade the old berth and send the ship to dry dock, that could have been needed four to six times. The new plan requires it once.

“By putting her in a new location, we never have to open our roadbed again,” Coates told WCSC Live 5. “We never have to close the museum again.”

Patriots Point will build the new mooring first and move the Laffey there. The ship will later go to Detyens Shipyards for a $3.8 million dry-docking that the newspaper described as a 10-year tune-up, then return to the new berth facing north, out of the way of tour boats.

The State Fiscal Accountability Authority has approved a separate permanent improvement project for the mooring, The Post and Courier reported. Dredging still needs approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the S.C. Department of Environmental Services, Live 5 reported, and no date has been set. Patriots Point has not disclosed what the new mooring will cost, the station reported.

The Laffey, which survived a 1945 attack off Okinawa that killed 32 sailors, has been closed to visitors since spring.