Posted on 01/20/2012 5:40:20 PM PST by BfloGuy
"What do you do with a 1,000-foot wreck that's full of fuel and half-submerged on a rocky ledge in the middle of an Italian marine sanctuary? Remove it. Very carefully. Stuck on a rocky shoal off the Tuscan island of Giglio, leaving the wreck where it is probably isn't an option but removing a massive ship that's run hard aground and incurred major damage to the hull involves logistical and environmental issues that are just as large. First there's the fuel. A half a million gallons of fuel could wreak havoc on the marine ecosystem — the ship is smack in the middle of the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals. Engineers may need to go in from the side using a special drill to cut through the fuel tanks in a process called hot tapping. 'You fasten a flange with a valve on it, you drill through, access the tank, pull the drill back out, close the valve, and then attach a pumping apparatus to that,' says Tim Beaver, president of the American Salvage Association. 'It's a difficult task, but it's doable.' Then if it's determined that the Costa Concordia can be saved, engineers could try to refloat the ship and tug it back to dry dock for refurbishing. The job will likely require 'a combination of barges equipped with winches and cranes' to pull the cruise liner off its side then once the Concordia is off the rocks, 'they are going to have to fight to keep it afloat, just like you would a battle-damaged ship.' Another alternative is to cut the vessel into smaller, manageable parts using a giant cutting wire coated with a material as hard as diamonds called a cheese wire in a method was used to dismember the 55,000-ton Norwegian-flagged MV Tricolor. Regardless of how the Concordia is removed, it's going to be a difficult, expensive and drawn-out process. 'I don't see it taking much less than a year, and I think it could take longer,' says Bob Umbdenstock, director of planning at Resolve Marine Group."
Those giant overhead tracking railway cranes are only available in shipyards, they can’t be built over the Concordia. No barge cranes are big enough to take her on in one piece, so the only thing left is to wrap the cutting chain around her and saw her into chunks smaller still than the one in your picture above.
The bigger they are the bigger the mess. You know I saw a heavy lift crane that raised that s Korean patrol boat from the ocean, the one that was sunk by a controversial enemy action. The scale of it was unreal.
I was going to post an image of some of those Japanese heavy lift floating cranes, but even those I think are just not big enough.
Would be a good time for someone to invent an anti-grav lift plate. It would sure be one for the record books if somebody like Titan was able to right it. Wait and see, wait and see if it shifts deeper, breaks up or gets cut up.
The cleanest way I would say would be to build a cofferdam around it, jack it up and just leave it there as a permanent resort, get some shore side connections, electrical water sewage etc, build a conveyor peoplemover or a tramway to it and keep the party going.
Turn it into an Italian version of the Queen Mary, of which I have toured.
Build the town a second breakwater, add a cofferdam, pump out the water, repair the ship, open up the dam, then float her out, turning the breakwater over to the local government as payment for all encroachments.
Why not?
As I understand it, she floated to where she's at right now.
Obviously it would be exceptionally difficult to seal all the underwater openings, pump out the water and refloat her, but it seems doable "in principle", if not economically.
Funny you should mention that, just this morning I was thinking about moving the gun safe and...
Travis you recall the Costa Classica event in 2006 when the Costa company (Carnival) ordered a ship extension project, Cammell Laird shipyards invested something like 60 million euros and built the plug.
The Classica turned around and returned to port, Costa refused to pay the shipyard, the shipyard went belly up and was sold off and a whole lot of British shipworkers lost their jobs.
Wouldn’t it be a twisted interesting act of revenge upon the high seas taking advantage of a Ferrari style cruise ship captain that was actually told to buzz that Italian port town to create more tourism.
That through means and ways someone plants false charts and changes the calibration of the ships navaids plus throws in a seductive temptress to distract the captain?
All the while our hero gets involved because he learns the ship is secretly transporting female slaves....women tourists kidnapped and being sold into as sex slaves.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.