Costa Concordia to be re-floated in two weeks

By Phil Davies 

The wreck of the Costa Concordia is due to be refloated in the next two weeks in the latest stage of the most expensive ship recovery operation in history.

The salvage could involve a semi-submersible boat effectively carrying the ship from its resting place off the Italian island of Giglio to Genoa to be dismantled.

Costs to insurers have spiralled to almost £1.2 billion because wrecks are usually cut into pieces and carried away. But Italian authorities have decided that such a move would risk an environmentally sensitive stretch of coastline so the ship is being removed in one piece.

Captain Rahul Kanna, a ship insurance specialist at insurer Allianz told the Mail in Sunday: “The primary reason for the cost is the method of removal. It sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Costa Concordia hit rocks in January 2012 killing 32 people.

The ship was turned upright last September after salvage contractors reinforced the seabed beneath it.

Modern shipping is creating the possibility for much bigger losses as ships grow in size and start to use remote Arctic shipping lanes, insurers are warning.

“Any losses in the Arctic would be a logistic nightmare to arrange rescue and salvage,” Kenna was reported as saying.

Semi-submersible vessel to give Concordia a lift

By Tom Stieghorst

One of the more amazing sights when the space shuttle program was in its prime was the 83-ton shuttle atop a Boeing 747 being ferried from its landing field at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The shuttle needed an assist because, other than its launch and return from earth orbit, it could not fly on its own.

Something similar may be in store for the partly raised Costa Concordia cruise ship. The salvage team for the Concordia has secured an option to use the Dockwise Vanguard to transport Concordia, which would be a first for the world’s largest semi-submersible vessel.

Dockwise is a Dutch firm that specializes in semi-submersibles. The vessels fill their ballast tanks to sink below a cargo, and then expel water to float them on large, flat cargo decks.

The Dockwise approach offers time and energy savings over towing large loads. Yacht captains have been using the Dockwise for years to transport their boats on long-distance journeys, saving wear, tear and crew costs.

But Dockwise Vanguard was not built for small payloads like mega-yachts. It was built to transport marine oil- and gas-drilling rigs, such as the Chevron Corp.'s 53,000-ton Jack/St. Malo oil platform, which it ferried from South Korea to the Gulf of Mexico last year.

The Concordia would be a bigger bite. According to the salvage team, Concordia will weigh about 75,000 tons, or about 1.5 million pounds, once it is refloated this June.

Dockwise Vanguard can handle it. The 900-foot-long ship, which was delivered last year, has a rated capacity of 110,000 tons. Of course, such a unique vessel doesn’t come cheap. The salvage team has paid $30 million just to secure an option to use the Vanguard for the job.

Without it, the Concordia would be towed in the conventional manner to port. But the seaworthiness of a ship that has been lying on its side in the ocean for two years is an open question.

What would it look like? You can see an online animation by Boskalis, the Dutch parent company of Dockwise, which shows how the Concordia would be loaded on Vanguard.

For the cruise industry, it can’t happen too soon.

Concordia: Search for missing officially called off

Concordia: Search for missing officially called off

Italian officials have permanently called off the search for bodies aboard Costa Concordia - the conditions inside have became too dangerous for the divers.

"We have definitively stopped the underwater search inside the ship," a spokesman for the fire brigade on the island of Giglio was quoted as saying by AFP.

A total of 17 bodies have been recovered, and 15 people remain missing.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, remains under house arrest facing charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

1. Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

   According to today's Telegraph, the chief prosecutor in charge of the inquiry has implored investigators to look beyond the behaviour of the captain to the role played by the liner's owners, Costa Cruises.
   
   His comments were published as salvage experts began the difficult task of removing around 2,400 tonnes of fuel from the vessel.
   
   
   
   Beniamino Deidda, the prosecutor, said in an interview carried by several Italian newspapers today: "For the moment, attention is generally concentrated on the responsibility of the captain, who showed himself to be tragically inadequate. But who chooses the captain?"
   
   He said investigators needed to avert their gaze to the decisions taken by "the employer; that is to say, the ship's owner".
   
   Deidda, who has spent a large part of his career dealing with health and safety cases, said numerous other issues needed to be addressed.
   
   He specifically mentioned "lifeboats that did not come down, crew who did not know what to do [and] scant preparation in crisis management".
   
   He added that it was "absurd" that in at least one instance, recorded on video after the Costa Concordia was holed, a member of the crew should have told passengers to return to their cabins.
   
   Schettino has also maintained that his employers have a shared responsibility for what happened. Among the questions the inquiry is seeking to answer is why more than an hour elapsed between impact and the order to abandon ship.
   
   Questioned by prosecutors last week, the captain said that he was in frequent contact with a representative of the company during that period.
   
   Schettino and his first officer are the sole formal suspects in the inquiry, which is looking at whether to bring charges of manslaughter and the illegal abandoning of a ship.
   
   On Monday, islanders reported seeing a large fuel slick in the waters off Giglio, which are protected as a marine nature reserve. The fuel, however, is thought by the authorities to have come from the initial impact with a cluster of rocks just south of the port of Giglio.
   
   The official co-ordinating operations on the island said on Monday there was still no evidence that fuel had leaked from the Costa Concordia's tanks.

Graphic: Saving the Costa Concordia

One of the tasks Costa Cruises has before it is to try to extract the fuel from the stranded Costa Concordia and to attempt to raise the vessel.

Costa has said in a statement that it "recognized the need to promptly address issues concerning the protection of the marine environment following the Costa Concordia accident."

The line has commissioned Smit Salvage of Rotterdam, Netherlands, to draw up a plan to recover the fuel reserves from the Concordia.

Toronto newspaper the National Post this week constructed a graphic of some of the possible techniques and outcomes of extracting the fuel and maneuvering the ship. The article is here. Click on the graphic to see a larger version.