I like Ships too

MILAN (AP) — Salvage work to remove the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship from its rocky perch off Tuscany, where 32 people died, will begin early next month and is expected to take a year, the Italian owner announced Saturday.

The U.S.-owned company Titan Salvage won the bid to remove the ship, which struck a reef off the tourist-dependent island of Giglio on Jan. 13, after the captain veered off course and steered the liner carrying 4,200 people close to shore in an apparent stunt. Thirty-two passengers and crew members died in the frantic and delayed evacuation. Two of those remain missing.

The salvage plan, which still needs approval by Italian authorities, foresees removing the ship in one piece and towing it to an Italian port, Costa said.

Workers completed the removal of fuel from the Concordia on March 24, and Costa said environmental protection will be a "top priority" during the ship's removal. The island of Giglio is in fishing grounds and falls within a sanctuary for dolphins.

Islanders have expressed concern that the ship's presence and salvage work will disrupt tourism, Giglio's main economic driver.

"As was the case with the removal of the fuel, we have sought to identify the best solution to safeguard the island and its marine environment and to protect its tourism," Costa CEO Pier Luigi Foschi said in a statement.

Titan Salvage, based in Pompano Beach, Florida, has performed more than 350 salvage and wreck removal projects since 1980, according to its website. It will partner with Microperi, an Italian marine contractor that specializes in underwater construction and engineering. Titan was one of six companies bidding for the salvage job.

Salvage crews and their equipment will be based at the nearby port of Civitavecchia in a move aimed minimizing the impact on Giglio's port activities, Costa said.

Capt. Francesco Schettino is accused of abandoning the ship in the middle of a confused evacuation that saw passengers and crew members jump into the water and swim to shore after the ship's tilt made it impossible to lower lifeboats.

Schettino, who is under house arrest and denies wrongdoing, faces possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. Other top officers and Costa officials also face possible charges. Schettino has claimed that the reef, which appears on many tourist maps, wasn't on his navigational charts.

The ship's owner, Costa Crociere SpA [a subsidiary of the U.S. company, Carnival Cruise Lines], has distanced itself from Schettino, contending he made an "unauthorized" maneuver that took him perilously too close to the island. It has said that only once, in August, was the cruise ship allowed to sail close to Giglio, because of a special occasion on the island.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=151099397

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JohnnySavage said:

Track your favorite ship here:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

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bluntforcemama said:

THIS! I love this. I need to make it down to the piers with this.

I vacationed in Honolulu a couple of years ago and was transfixed by the cargo ships off the beach. There must have been at least ten of them, all waiting to unload. Much more interesting than the beach itself. Such behemoths.

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JohnnySavage said:

I am going kayaking here next weekend

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bluntforcemama said:

That's a bit scary. I refuse to kayak in moving water. Strictly lakes. Even ponds.

And isn't the Potomac notoriously dirty?

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JohnnySavage said:

Dirty as in polluted? Upstream from DC it's not. Downstream it can be because the Anacostia River collects all the urban run-off and puts it in the river.

That 'bay' is about 60 miles upstream from the bay, but downstream from DC. The Potomac is pretty wide there and has a slow current. The water is brackish and subject to tidal action. I wouldn't swim in it, but that not because of pollution, but because of mud and critters that bite when you step on them.

Nearer the bay there is a sunken German U-Boat that is a protected dive site.

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bluntforcemama said:

No, dirty as in naughty. :/ (being sarcastic, sorry)

I've only been to the west coast once, so all my information comes from a friend whose family lives on a boat near DC. It sounds as though might agree with the water quality, though.

I saw the boat in the photos, or at least what I think is the U-boat. It's only partially submerged, yes?

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JohnnySavage said:

Mallow's Bay is a bunch of old WWI ships that were built but the war ended before they were used. They were made of wood, which made them obsolete right away. After the war, nobody wanted them so they were towed there and abandoned.

The submarine was taken after WWII and sunk for target practice right at the mouth of the Potomac. I have no idea why it was sunk there and not in the ocean; but when the navy sunk it, they transposed the wrong numbers on the coordinates, and it sat unknown until the 80s. Local fishermen knew there was a wreck there, and it was marked on navigational charts, but until a sport diver went and looked, nobody knew it was a submarine.

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bluntforcemama said:

Beeter, what don't you have a tattoo of? Oh wait. Ayn Rand. That's my next request for your next tattoo.

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bluntforcemama said:

A flower on your ankle?

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bluntforcemama said:

A flower on your ankle?

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BeeteOfferr said:

I'm super excited about my next one.

My friend is designing a cribbage boards with bleeding heart roses in the inlay, and then writing Mom on the side of the board. It's going to be awesome as hell!

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trysail said:

50 let Pobedy

(Latitude / Longitude: 89.90152° N. / 23.58397° E. )


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thør said:

You're going to give the US Navy an inferiority complex.












oh, they already have it in arctic waters.......

link

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Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer plans to build a 21st-century replica of the Titanic and sail it from England to New York accompanied by the Chinese navy by the end of 2016.

He has signed a first-stage agreement with Nanjing-based CSC Jinling Shipyard to build the ship as part of a planned fleet of luxury liners, the Gold Coast, Queensland-based businessman said in an e-mailed statement today.

Palmer, whose investments include golf courses, hotels, coal and iron-ore mining projects, a nickel smelter, a soccer team and a horse stud, said the ship will have the same dimensions as the original Titanic. A move into the cruise market, where ships typically cost at least $500 million to build, is an ambitious step, Greg Johnson... said by phone.

“You’re starting from scratch with no experience,” Johnson said. “A $500 million punt is quite sizable.”

The Titanic, commissioned by White Star Line, was the largest liner in the world when built at just under 270 meters (about 880 feet) and 53 meters high. It sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg east of Newfoundland, costing the lives of more than 1,500 passengers and crew, according to the statement. The Titanic II will, like its predecessor, have 840 rooms on nine decks, Palmer said.

Swimming Pools
“It will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic, but of course it will have state-of-the-art 21st century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems,” Palmer said, along with gymnasiums and swimming pools.

Palmer, 58, a former media adviser to Queensland’s late state premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, is known for ambitious projects in varied fields.

In March he was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald promising to invest in a blind trust to encourage media diversity in Australia, and saying that Australia’s Greens party was funded by the CIA.

He unveiled the Titanic II plan just over an hour before a separate announcement that he would stand against Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan in his seat of Lilley at a federal election due next year.

Challenge to Build
A person on duty at the managing director’s office of CSC Jinling said by phone that while he wasn’t aware of the deal, it may have been signed by the company’s marketing and sales department. Today is a public holiday in China.

The move into the cruise-ship industry, one of the few areas of heavy manufacturing still dominated by European companies, would be a challenge for a Chinese company, said Hur Sung Duck, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities Co. in Seoul.

“That’s a huge jump for a country that builds mostly bulk ships” used for carrying coal, iron ore and grains, Hur said. “I seriously find it difficult to believe it can be built by that time.”

Italy’s Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani SpA, Norway’s STX Europe AS and Germany’s Meyer Werft GmbH, are the largest players in the cruise ship-building market, according to a 2010 presentation by Samsung Heavy Industries Co.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. last November completed two ships for Carnival Corp., while STX Europe is owned by Changwon, Korea-based STX Corp.

‘Major Player’
“The Chinese ship-building industry with our assistance wants to be a major player in this market,” Palmer said in the statement.

The ship would sail under his company, to be name Blue Star Line in reference to the Titanic’s owner. China’s navy would be invited “to escort Titanic II on its maiden voyage to New York,” Palmer said.

Blue Star Line was registered on April 18 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Palmer’s Mineralogy Pty., according to its only document filed with Australia’s securities regulator. Palmer and Derek Payne, manager of his Cold Mountain horse stud, are the only officers listed in the three-page filing.

The mining magnate has a fortune of A$5.05 billion ($5.3 billion) and is Australia’s fifth-richest person, according to BRW magazine rankings. He is developing coal and iron-ore mines in Australia, including the $8 billion China First coal project in Queensland state. Last year, he dropped plans to sell shares in his company Resourcehouse Ltd. in Hong Kong after commodity prices fell.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...built-by-billionaire-palmer-chinese-yard.html

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