Stranded ship to stay - for now

2003-08-21 15:23

Cape Town - The stranded Sealand Express will be a fixture off the Milnerton beachfront for the next week - and possibly a good deal longer.

This news came as it emerged that port authorities have no voice recordings of crucial exchanges with the ship as she drifted towards shore on Tuesday morning.

Salvors were preparing on Thursday to begin pumping about 4 000 tons of heavy fuel oil and 2 000 tons of water ballast from the vessel after a third attempt by salvage tugs to shift her failed on Wednesday night.

"She is permanently fixed for the moment," operations manager of the South African Maritime Safety Authority, Captain Bill Dernier, said at noon.

The operation to remove the fuel oil was going to take several days, and would depend on the weather.

The next cold front is due to hit Cape Town about Saturday evening.

Dernier said salvors Smit Marine would try to pull her off again in about eight days, at the next spring tide.

In the meantime, anchors and wires would be laid to hold her in position so she did not move further towards the beach.

Hoses would be rigged for the transfer of the oil, which Diernier would like to see start on Thursday, but would in all likelihood only begin on Friday.

Sapa understands that the Sealand Express is a double-hulled ship, and under normal circumstances her fuel would be stored in tanks between the two skins. She also has so-called wing tanks higher up on the vessel.

It is likely salvors will pump the fuel oil from the lower tanks to the wing tanks, and from these, via a floating hose, to either a tanker or a tug.

The oil would be shuttled to the harbour across the bay.

Dernier said that if after removal of the fuel, attempts to refloat the ship failed, consideration would have to be given to removing the 1 037 containers on board.

It is understood that the ship does not have an on-board crane; the containers are too heavy for local helicopters, and the port authority is apprehensive about using the harbour's floating crane in anything but perfect weather.

Dernier suggested that the only way to get the cargo off would be to build a causeway out to her.

Western Cape local government MEC Cobus Dowry said after a briefing on Thursday morning by the provincial disaster management team on the spot that the prospects were "not good".

"At this stage there's not much hope to get it off that sandbank," he said.

"The longer is stays there the deeper it sinks into the sand, and the sea's bringing more sand up."

He had been briefed on the plans to remove the fuel.

"If they've done that, most of the danger will then be gone, because our biggest fear is the oil spill," he said.

Asked about reports that the hazardous materials listed in some of the 1 037 containers included poisons, compressed gas and low-level radioactive materials, he said customs officials were on board inspecting the cargo and would "come off and tell us".

Dernier also confirmed on Thursday that there are no voice recordings of key exchanges between port authorities and the ship before she ran aground.

He said "something went wrong" at port control, which normally records all ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship exchanges on its multi-million rand, state of the art communications system.

Dernier said port control did however have the vessel's radar plots stored in digital form, and he was going to view these on Thursday afternoon.

National Ports Authority spokesperson Donald Kau referred all queries about the tapes to the South African Maritime Safety Authority.

- SAPA