Concordia News: Please Post Here

[MorganMars]

My deepest apologies to everyone. I had no idea. I will go back and see if I can delete my post right now.

 

Regards,

MorganMars

 

ETA: Sorry, I could not delete the post, so I have reported my own post to ask the admins to delete it.

Edited August 21, 2013 by MorganMars

[Heiwaco]

Any shipowner blaming the master for everything going wrong isn't worth much. Costa Concordia was not seaworthy all the time prior the incidents 13 and 14 January 2012, which I explain on my web site since a long time. It is a proven fact that the helmsman provided by the shipowner caused the contact. He didn't speak the working language Italian aboard and didn't understand the English of the master. The evacuation was a fiasco and the liferafts were not used as the crew didn't know how to launch them and the passengers didn't knew they existed. Everybody just ran for the lifeboats. No mustering! They didn't test the system.

And the ship capsized due the illegal watertight doors aboard. Watertight doors are not permitted by SOLAS and Costa Concordia had 25. On top of it they were open at sea. Sorry. Not permitted.

The Costa ISM system was causing the incidents and killing people. The master just followed it and is innocent. To improve safety at sea you really have to improve Costa's ISM system and the people responsible for it. Quite obvious!

[SomeBeach]

This used to be (and still is) one of most useful and interesting discussion threads on offer. Everybody behaves, not everything can be correct, but it is the enormous breadth and width of knowledge which comes together here. Various professions contribute. Arm chair salvage experts and real salvage experts.

 

But we are now in a slight danger that this slips, as a forum troll has found us. I sincerely hope we can steer away from Troll Island. No blame, who could have known that he searches for his own links so intensively.

 

His profile here was registered in 2005, at the time of this writing just 2 contributions of recent days in a defensive tone already. This doesn't look good.

 

May I kindly suggest to apply the only known cure, but please please rigourously:

 

• No mention of the name.
  
• No reaction to his posts, absolutely none. <<< THIS IS THE MOST CRITICAL BIT
  
• No quotes of his posts.
  

Friends, the danger is real, I have seen such things before. And I really want to continue to exchange ideas and opinions with people from Maine and Manchester, Scotland and Oklahoma and everything in-between.

 

I have gone a step further. Go to User CP which you'll find at the top of this page. Once there, scan down to Edit Ignore. Type in the username and you will not be able to read anything from him.

Our thread is about the salvage operations and we need to keep it that way.

[clive and anne]

OK friends

As the originator of this thread I feel that Mr Heiwaco has had his 15 minutes of fame, if that is what he thinks it is and the only way we are going to retain the friendliness of this thread is to ignore him.

As usual Mike Minh and Some Beach have come up with several suggestions you may care to take to persuade Heiwaco to move on from our thread.

No doubt the moderators will be watching and will take the necessary action should it be necessary.

Meanwhile I suggest we get back to the question of the salvage of the Costa Concordia.....please

Please let this be the last post or reference to this gentleman

Many Thanks

Clive

[clive and anne]

Can I ask if, when the parbuckle is imminent that Pioneer which is the large accommodation/ floating dock will be moved away from the site along with what looks like a small town of support vessels in case things do go wrong with the parbuckle.

[CTH]

Clive, Mike, & SomeBeach; Well said!!

 

Can I ask if, when the parbuckle is imminent that Pioneer which is the large accommodation/ floating dock will be moved away from the site along with what looks like a small town of support vessels in case things do go wrong with the parbuckle.

 

Clive, I'm no expert, but I'm sure Pioneer & the working platforms would all be set back @ a distance from CC during the Parbuckle. Wires/cables/chains could snap, anchor blocks/towers could shift, I'm sure there's a long list of possible dangerous situations!

 

I read somewhere (can't remember where!) that the harbour would be closed, an exclusion zone would be set at a certain distance from CC, pollution facilities, & accident & emergency teams would be on standby.

 

Looking @ the webcams this morning, M30 appears to have detached her chains/hooks from the blister, but is remaining in position. So the blister must be supporting itself now. Hoping M30 will move back soon so we can see if the cables attached to the strand jacks on top of the sponsons are being attached down to the underwater platforms. This maybe M30's next job?

 

Anyone know where we are with the amount of remaining grout bags to be positioned?

[clive and anne]

Good morning CTH

Its going to take some days to clear the site I would expect, there is more there than we can see.

Narvik which is the ship that I think is supplying the grout bags is on the way back and should arrive about 11am. So there is still more to do. Doesn't the progress report suggest that the fitting of the grout bags continue till just before the parbuckle.

[Heiwaco]

 

Anyone know where we are with the amount of remaining grout bags to be positioned?

 

The side of the capsized wreck's fore and aft ends are resting on two granite reef outreaches, while the part in between is not resting on anything. The forward and aft side sections in contact with the reef are already crushed so that the wreck has displaced down 2-3 meters. The intermediate part at say 0.3L mid ship is not supported by anything

That part may be >100 meters long and the depth between the bilge and the seabed may be 0-6-10 meters. A diver can easily swim below the wreck. And it has to be filled up by grouting bags full of cement in the shape of a wall (an artificial sea bed) with sloping sides, top of which will support the bilge while parbuckling.

With an average width of 10 meters and height 6 meters (the seabed is sloping) and length 100 meters the volume of the grouting wall will be a staggering 6 000 m3 and to build it you need say 20 000 tons of cement or 240 bags each 25 m3. The bag is brought down empty and filled in situ via a long hose from a supply boat with cement above. It seems this work is going on. Supply boats come and go!

When the ship is finally rotated the starboard bilge of the slender ship’s hull will touch the top of this grouting bag wall and apply a big pressure. It may be >600 ton/m² and it will evidently crush the radiused bilge structure (12 mm plate supported at top/btm by the inner bottom and a side girder). The pressure is also applied to the grouting wall that may slide away.

If nothing then supports the crushed bilge – the grouting bag support has shifted - the wreck may sag into the void and break at the supports at the ends.

The wreck was evidently not built to be parbuckled. :rolleyes:

[clive and anne]

CTH

Narvik has arrived on site, I think there are two storage tanks on Pioneer that fills up each visit. It shuttles between Piombino and the wreck every couple of days.

I wonder where the village of vessels will relocate whilst the parbuckle takes place.

I guess there must be people actually working on the project who monitor this thread, it would be great if they could tell us who they are.

[sidari]

Morgan ... No insult meant but i am so glad i never bothered to look at those links .... :)

 

it sounds just like the one who is on the MSC boards telling everyone that will listen why not to cruise with MSC having never set foot on one of their ships and using everyone else`s photos to justify his claims.

 

As for 9/11 i cannot understand for the life of me why anyone would want to make out that it was staged!

 

To the credit of Clive and everyone else this thread has stayed 99.9% on the Topic thread, long may it continue.

[clive and anne]

For the first time the tugs have moved away from the blister and now we can see the blister attached.

[Heiwaco]

Or at least the top of the port side blister. :D

[clive and anne]

M30 has now pulled right back away from the wreck. still looking for the cables CTH although my laptop isn't very clear. perhaps our friends with better equipment maybe able to see something I cant.

[Bearded Engineer]

M30 has now pulled right back away from the wreck. still looking for the cables CTH although my laptop isn't very clear. perhaps our friends with better equipment maybe able to see something I cant.

 

In the view from the Webcam Traghetto you can see what are either cables or chains draping over the bottom edges of the cassions. They look like a brown curtian. They are hanging straight down so there is no way to tell if they have yet to be attached to the sub-sea platforms or if they are attached but hanging slack.

[Bearded Engineer]

If anyone is interested here is a link with some pictures of the parbuckling of the USS Oklahoma which capsized and sank during the attack on Pearl Harbour in WWII. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/ph-ok9.htm

[CTH]

I wonder where the village of vessels will relocate whilst the parbuckle takes place.

Clive, just a guess but there are two bays directly south of Giglio harbour where tugs etc often drop their anchor overnight (according to vesselfinder.com over the last year). Maybe some vessels will relocate round there during the parbuckle.

 

Talking of vessels, MV Lone has now set off for Gibraltar (lots of arguing going on there at the moment!) & M30's Captain must have read my earlier post as he has now reversed away from CC! The blister can clearly be seen, I can understand why they don't want to attach the caissons/sponsons to the blister until after the parbuckle, otherwise the blister would be pushed down under the weight of the caisson. Maybe the blister is more or less floating at the moment, with CC's bow & the 3 'spikes' holding it in place?

[Heiwaco]

I do not understand http://www.theparbucklingproject.com/

 

They say that 11 sponsons have been installed on the wreck above water and that 4 remains to be installed (below water) and project is 76% completed. OK, 4 of 15 not fitted ~24% remains.

I think it is 19. Out of 30. So only 37% of the sponsons are attached. Am I wrong? Another 19 shall be attached below water. Easy job.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Heiwaco

[clive and anne]

Hi CTH

I would have thought that they would want to keep the staff close to the wreck, I suppose they could put them the other side of the wreck far enough away in case of accident. Strangely I noticed that Lone had set sail but originally her destination was Corsica which then changed to Gibralter.

Thanks for the link BE, I visited Pearl Harbour a few years ago and found the memorial a very moving place. Coincidentally our visit was on 11/11 so we took our poppies from UK and put them on the memorial, the Vet on duty had tears in his eyes........and so did we.

[Tonka's Skipper]

Morgan ... No insult meant but i am so glad i never bothered to look at those links .... :)

 

it sounds just like the one who is on the MSC boards telling everyone that will listen why not to cruise with MSC having never set foot on one of their ships and using everyone else`s photos to justify his claims.

 

As for 9/11 i cannot understand for the life of me why anyone would want to make out that it was staged!

 

To the credit of Clive and everyone else this thread has stayed 99.9% on the Topic thread, long may it continue.

 

 

I totally agree my friend!:D

 

 

AKK

[SomeBeach]

Good morning CTH

Its going to take some days to clear the site I would expect, there is more there than we can see.

Narvik which is the ship that I think is supplying the grout bags is on the way back and should arrive about 11am. So there is still more to do. Doesn't the progress report suggest that the fitting of the grout bags continue till just before the parbuckle.

 

In a video on the parbuckle site Mr Sloane suggests that the grouting work was expected to be finished about the 20th of Aug. Course that video was made over a month ago and there could have been some delays.

[lightman1984]

In a video on the parbuckle site Mr Sloane suggests that the grouting work was expected to be finished about the 20th of Aug. Course that video was made over a month ago and there could have been some delays.

 

The last removal report posted Sunday claimed grouting had reached 96%, slated for conclusion on 9/2

[SomeBeach]

The last removal report posted Sunday claimed grouting had reached 96%, slated for conclusion on 9/2

 

Didn't see that one. Thanks.

[Bearded Engineer]

I wonder what they will do with all the grout bags after they remove them from Giglio when the ship is gone. They would make a good breakwater somewhere.

[MorganMars]

I totally agree my friend!:D

 

 

AKK

 

Morgan ... No insult meant but i am so glad i never bothered to look at those links .... :)

 

it sounds just like the one who is on the MSC boards telling everyone that will listen why not to cruise with MSC having never set foot on one of their ships and using everyone else`s photos to justify his claims.

 

As for 9/11 i cannot understand for the life of me why anyone would want to make out that it was staged!

 

To the credit of Clive and everyone else this thread has stayed 99.9% on the Topic thread' date=' long may it continue.[/quote']

 

Again, my heartfelt apologies. Should have read through the site before posting it here.

 

Mea Culpa,

MorganMars

[SomeBeach]

If anyone is interested here is a link with some pictures of the parbuckling of the USS Oklahoma which capsized and sank during the attack on Pearl Harbour in WWII. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/ph-ok9.htm

 

Thanks BE. I finally had time to look at your link. Most interesting.

And I found this:

 

Photo #: NH 63920

 

Salvage of USS Oklahoma (BB-37), 1942-44

 

Ductwork installed to ventilate the capsized battleship's starboard side blister during salvage work.

Photographed 11 December 1942, as the ship was being prepared for righting. Note the lugs welded to the blister side, to which the righting cables will be attached.

 

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, NHHC Collection.

 

Online Image: 141KB; 740 x 615

 

It talks about the "blister." In that pix, what is the blister?