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."
Is that the toesucker from The Ted Baxter Factor?
They say that boulder is the size of a concrete mixer, if they are saying in relation to the size of your average 10 yard mixer drum it would indeed be extremely heavy.
I have been driving mixer trucks for 17 years, at the worst absolute capacity of a 10 yard drum that is about 50-60% full of concrete you are looking at about 40,000 lbs.
So if you fill one all the way like it was a big upright container of a similar dimension I would say that rock might be over 100,000 lbs or 50 tons.
The bright spot in all of this though its quite small considered is that the hull breach so far is above water, they could probably just wrench that boulder out with cable or drill it and do some fracturing through explosives, my company has done that with drums of hardened concrete, they even have expanding chemicals that will fracture bore holes.
But I would not be surprised if they just leave it there and patch some plate over it, or fill it with concrete, when the boat gets to a drydock they can remove the mess.
They raised the Normandy after pumping concrete into the hull area that was crushed on the seafloor, and then pumped the water out. And it took months back then.
I bet some Italian film agency will suggest they use it in a scene for a future James Bond movies.
I bet this idea of mine will make me rich!
Build a breakwater around it, level it out, pump the bottom full of mud or concrete and turn it into a hotel.
I am just full of original ideas!
I can just smell the money coming to me for my idea.
I'm amazed that I wasn't the only one to think of that.
“I think this ship will have her super-structure cut off as much as possible, then floated to the bone-yard.”
A very pragmatic assessment however there’s a $500,000,000 bet against that. If they can salvage and refit her for less the insurance company saves money.
Yep, cutting chain is the best way to go. They’ll start with the bow and stern and section her up into portions a barge/crane can handle.
She won’t be salvaged in one piece or refloated.
Yes we did move the country closer to the community organizing ideal of Detroit.
That’s an AWESOME story on the salvage cowboys. Amazing. But the Cougar Ace was fully afloat, it was just a ballast shifting job to right her, in deep water. And she was “just” 55,000 tons.
This cruise liner is 114,000 tons, more than our biggest nuclear aircraft carriers, and much higher from keel to superstructure. She’s nested in rocks on her side. To refloat, she needs to be righted first, which is not possible, since there are no barge/cranes in the world 1/4 big enough for the job.
Then, if she was righted, she would still be hard aground on rock, far above her floating marks. To refloat her, they would need to remove the rocky sea bed beneath her. Won’t/can’t happen.
Nope, she’s stuck for good, until she’s cut into pieces. Eye of Unk has the most likely solution. Once the oil is removed, she’ll be sawed into chunks with giant cutting chains slicing through her like a gigantic band saw.
“I was a victim of my instincts.”
Really? That’s the best excuse the captain could come up with?
If its done right they could retrieve sections like the bow and the stern and then just build a new mid section, some years ago I recall a cruise ship that was sliced in half and an “extension” plug was shoved in between.
I just saw an image of it a few minutes ago.
BTW, I read a post over at CruiseCritic that a womans body has just been found.
I have about 23 dollars I can spare. Oh, and about 10 tubes of superglue.
Cruise Ship Cut in Half to Add More Rooms
Say you’re an executive of a cruise company, the demand for cruises is growing rapidly and you want to increase the passenger capacity of your ships. What would you do? You can, of course, order new ships, but it takes 3 or more years to build them. How about something quicker? How about you take one of your huge 12-story ships, cut it in half at the middle and add a huge block of new rooms?
Well, that’s exactly how the executives at Royal Caribbean decided to proceed. They took one of their ships - Enchantment of the Seas - and expanded it to accommodate for increased demand for cruises.
Initially, the construction crew used circular saws and torches to cut the ship at the middle. They cut through everything - the outer hull that was made from steel, the watertight inner hull, cables, pipes, even ventilation system. The swimming pool on the ship’s top deck was also cut. The whole cutting process took 2 days, and after it was finished, a narrow line of light could be seen traveling from the top of the ship all the way to the bottom.
After that, the construction crew moved the two halves of the ship away from each other, and positioned a huge 73 foot, 2,500 ton section (which contained 151 furnished rooms) between them. Then came the final part - reattaching cables, pipes and everything else - a process that took two weeks.
The enlargement of the cruise ship took about one month, during which the ship grew from 916 feet to 990 feet. This process, which took place on a shipyard called Keppel Verolme in Rotterdam, Netherlands, cost about $60 million, just a fraction of the cost it takes to build a new ship. Now the ship - Enchantment of the Seas - is able to enchant 300 more vacationers on each of its trips.
http://www.al-cruise.com/Cruise-Ship-Enlarged.htm
According to my calculations, that means if 19 were built, that would be 190 tones of lifting power.
So I have a logical, sensible solution.
Simply send out the Skycranes 527 times.
This is what I believe they will do to the Concordia. BTW... an interesting article that also mentions Costa. http://www.cybercruises.com/cruisecolumn_aug24.htm
Wow. A stretch limo cruise ship.
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