By
Rebecca Gibson |
Engineers have started the operations to refloat Costa Cruises’ Costa Concordia off the coast of Giglio Island in Genoa, Italy.
Nick Sloane, the senior salvage master, and the rest of his team arrived at the Remote Operations Center, which is located on Concordia, at 6am local time. Work to remove the final 1,000 tonnes of weight began at 8.30am.
The full refloating phase will take place in five stages and is expected to take around six or seven days.
During the first stage, Concordia will be partially refloated about 2m up off the underwater platforms and moved 30m towards the east with the assistance of tugs. The ship will then be securely moored to enable technicians to complete the attachment and tensioning of the last cables and chains, and to lower the starboard sponsons to their final position. Once this is completed, technicians will use a pneumatic system to gradually empty all 30 sponsons of ballast water, providing the necessary buoyancy to raise the ship one deck at a time from deck 6 to deck 3. At the end of this operation the ship will have a draft of around 18.5 m.
Concordia is currently scheduled to depart Giglio on 21 July, when she will be towed to the San Giorgio del Porto shipyard in Genoa over the course of four or five days. The ship will then be dismantled and recycled during a four-phase, 22-month project.