Posted on 08/01/2006 6:58:58 AM PDT by skeptoid
A four-man salvage team was able to access and survey the Cougar Ace yesterday, determining that at least some cargo remains in place and that the vessel remains stable. However, while conducting the survey, one of the team members fell and died from injuries sustained in the fall. ....... snip
...... The team determined that the cargo on the number one deck, the highest deck, remains in place. Cargo on the ninth deck has also remained in place. The engine room is intact and there is no sign of water. There are a total of fourteen car cargo decks on the Cougar Ace. .....
(Excerpt) Read more at sitnews.us ...
The survey team from Titan salvage attempts to access the vessel from the Makushin Bay. Initially they were not able to gain entry; however, successful access was gained by airlifting the team with the Coast Guard cutter Morgenthau's embarked HH-65 Dolphin helicopter. Unified Command Photo
Fora sense of scale, see the two guys on top of the Emma Foss wheelhouse and two on bow of the Makushin Bay.
Another possible on the Emma's bow.
This could be a new walk-thru adventure/experience at a theme park!
Bummer about the survey crewman tho.
In the pic in Post #2, are the sailors lined up with their backs against the deck?!
...........sure looks that way.... twist your head sorta/kinda to the right (or pick up your monitor and twist it to your left....!), and you'll see that they really are pretty much lying against the deck...that pot/dome-shaped thingie on that tower would normally be vertical, I believe....
That is amazing. What could cause a ship to list like that? If the hull were breached, one would think that she would be sinking.
It could have been a cargo shift. Ships have been lost because their cargo shifted in a storm.
Happens to planes, too.
Good God. THAT would be a blunder.
I don't mean to find the humor in this, but the possibilites are wide. Having spent time on an aircraft carrier, just imagining that brings...well...lots of ridiculous situations to mind...
It looks like that WAS the blunder.
KTVA, Disabled ship drifting toward the Aleutians
Article Last Updated: 07/29/2006 01:31:47 AM AKDT
...the 654-foot ship likely discharged too much water from ballast tanks, causing it to suddenly list. He says company officials believe the vessel rolled on the swell of the sea while the crew was adjusting the ballast.
ADN, Ship was adjusting ballast
Published: July 26, 2006
The crew on the huge car-carrying ship in the North Pacific was scrambling to adjust the ballast water used to stabilize large vessels.
But something went wrong. Maybe it was a weight shift. Maybe a monster wave. The 654-foot Cougar Ace flipped onto its side. The closest land: 230 miles away in Alaska, at the tip of the Aleutian Islands.
"Everything went to hell in a hand basket in 10 minutes," said Michael Terry, a nurse practitioner at the health clinic in Adak who talked to the ship's captain and crew about what happened when their ship and its cargo suddenly rolled late Sunday night.
excerpted...
I might be able to understand if they had an engineering failure like a frozen valve or pump...
I have this vision of the ship listing further and further, but maybe it didn't work that way. Perhaps the ship was pretty stable until a point, when the rising center of gravity hit a particulary critical sour spot and the ship suddenly tilted crazily.
Initial reports blamed a rogue wave, but is sounded like an easy excuse. Without knowing anything about what happened, I imagined someone walking away from the controls while ballast was being pumped, then remembering too late.
Additional information I found somewhere:
According to Mitsui O.S.K. Lines spokesman Greg Beuerman (beer man), the crew was attempting to remove ballast water, a practice required under international maritime rules to prevent marine organisms picked up at one port from being dumped with the ballast in another part of the world. He said alien organisms can cause significant damage in their new habitat, so the water is released on the high seas.
Beuerman said too much water was probably discharged when the crew was adjusting the ballast.
The ship carries nearly five thousand Mazda automobiles, valued at about 90-million dollars. It had been headed to west coast ports in British Columbia, Washington State and California.
Thanks .... I've wondered WHY they would discharge ballast on the high seas. This makes sense.
That's bulkhead, my man! You walk on the deck.
MEA CULPA!!! It does look like the deck. It looks like the crew is in some sort of red survival suit, and the Coasties are walking around in blue coordinating the rescue.
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