gCaptain.com

In an interesting turn of events the salvage team working to remove the Coal Ship that ran aground on a popular Australian beach believe Pasha Bulker is damaged worse than predicted. The Herald Sun tells us:

A salvage expert and marine engineer said the cost of refloating the ship and fixing its damaged hull was so close to the vessel’s $41million replacement price it was financially unviable.

If the Pasha is labeled a “total constructive loss”, the ship could be dismantled on site - a task that would take six months, plus time for planning and approval.

If this plan to scrap the vessel happens a new team of experts will arrive to build a pier out to the ship and pump out all remaining fuel oil. Then “big thermal lances and other heavy hi-tech cutting equipment to cut it to pieces, crane it away on trucks and dispose of it.” This process will need to get various environmental and safety approvals before the shipwrecking teams can begin.

Update:

Our readers have been providing quality “Pasha Bulker” updates on this post. The latest (24 July 2007) post from our number one local reporter Ian states:

Local radio this morning, interviewed ‘one of Australia’s leading salvage experts’, Brett Divine who believes that the vessel has sustained serious damage below water and may not hold up to the stresses involved in hauling her off. It appears that his company is one of several already discussing plans to dismantle the vessel should the refloating effort fail.

Read our past “Pasha Bulker” posts.
View our Pasha Bulker Slide-Show.

The latest word from Newcastle, Australia is to wait before re-floating the grounded coal ship “Pasha Bulker”. The West gives us information directly from the salvage team:

“The reality is that these preparations will not be completed for the Spring tides this weekend, and the salvage team is now looking to the next set of higher tides near the end of June.”

Svitzer’s shore-side salvage master Drew Shannon said the operation would involve up to four vessels.

“The key vessel will be the anchor handling vessel which will lay anchors out to sea and also feed cables back to the Pasha Bulker’s onboard winches, assisting the ship to move off the sea-bed and be re-floated,” Mr Shannon said in a statement.

“We have successfully filled one of the cargo holds with sea water to prevent the ship from moving and are continuing to test the fuel lines and transfer the fuel to higher compartments of the ship.

“The tanks at the bottom of the ship are being prepared for ‘air-blowing’ to assist in forcing water out of the bottom of the ship, as well as to create buoyancy to assist in the re-floating.”

Mr Shannon said all the preparation should be completed before the next Spring tides, but weather and ocean conditions would be critical.

More than 20 Australian and international maritime agencies are involved in the salvage operation.

Pasha Bulker ’stuck’ until end of June

The salvage operations are being lead by Svitzer Salvage, a division of A.P. Moller-Maersk who are optomistic about recovering the vessel without environmental damage.

Photos and Video: [Continue Reading →]

After pouring over the media reports and available facts I’ve decided the story can best be said by our resident maritime experts, gCaptian’s r. Here is MarkL’s insightful and humorous take:

Observations of a relative indicates that the second gale ( which was more from the south and which coincided with a reasonably high tide) pushed her off the reef and 200-300 yards north, into even shallower water.

This will make life interesting for the salvage effort [being performed by Svitzer Salvage, a division of A.P. Moller-Maersk], as she is now between the shoreline and a line of shallow reefs offshore.

If this effort succeeds in such an exposed spot in winter, it will be one of those quiet epics of salvage we hear so little about in general media. A joke presently being bandied about Newcastle is that the city should forbid salvage, buy the wreck and convert it into ‘apartments with a 360 degree ocean view to sell to idiots from Sydney’. [Continue Reading →]

UPDATE: Hunter’s Best informs us that all 22 people have been evacuated from the ship:

EMERGENCY crews have successfully airlifted 22 people from a coal ship that ran aground off Newcastle, New South Wales, in a dramatic rescue described as being “10 out of 10″ for difficulty today.

Read their excellent local coverage: HERE

Bloomberg has more of the story:

The grounding of the Pasha Bulker, which is registered in Panama, raises concerns about the conditions of so-called flag of convenience ships off Newcastle, the International Transport Workers Federation said in a separate e-mailed statement. The ship is flagged by Wealth Line Inc. for the Japanese shipping line Sansho Kaiun Co., Dean Summers, national coordinator of the federation, said in the statement.

The ship’s crew includes 18 Filipinos and two Koreans, the federation said.

Any spill of fuel from the ship could result in an “environmental disaster” for the Newcastle region, Cate Faehrmann, executive director of the Nature Conservation Council, said in a separate statement.

Traces of fuel have started to wash up on the beach at Newcastle, the Herald reported.

Coal Ship Grounded at Newcastle as Gales Hit Coast

John Konrad is a USCG licensed Master Mariner of Unlimited Tonnage currently working as Chief Mate aboard a 835′ ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Since graduating from SUNY Maritime College he has sailed in 4 of the worlds oceans and reports from his ship via satellite.