The state Bond Commission approved a proposal Tuesday morning to award a $620,000 grant to Discovering Amistad, the newly formed nonprofit organization.

The funding is intended to enable the organization to purchase the historic ship replica out of receivership for $315,000 and make repairs to allow it to retain its Coast Guard certification.

The grant paves the way for the ship’s court-appointed receiver to transfer ownership Nov. 1.

The new owner is also slated to receive $342,000 in operating funds in each of the next two years from the state budget.

Attorney Katharine Sachs of New Haven, the ship’s state-appointed receiver, has said the $315,000 selling price will not cover the $2.2 million in debt that former owner Amistad America still owes to a collection of small businesses, banks and individuals.

It cost $2.5 million to build the Amistad at Mystic Seaport in 2000, but a marine surveyor hired by Sachs found that the current market for such a ship was soft.

The ship spent this past summer in New London and is now at Mystic Seaport for the winter.

The ship will remain docked at the museum for the winter and spring with the schooner’s crew making repairs.

Sachs has said that state Attorney General George Jepsen will file motions in Superior Court in mid-October regarding the sale of the ship and distribution of its proceeds.

She said she will be directed to hold the proceeds in an account until the court tells her how to distribute them to the creditors.

Sachs said there will be a process to notify the creditors, and a hearing will be held.

The schooner is a replica of the ship that was commandeered by its African captives off the Cuban coast in 1839.

Captured off Montauk, N.Y., the ship was brought to New London and the captives were taken to New Haven, where they were held for trial and eventually set free.

j.wojtas@theday.com

Twitter: @joewojtas