Salvaging slow, clock ticking

2003-08-22 22:11

Carel van Dyk

Cape Town - By Friday evening, the salvaging company, Smit Marine, had pumped more than 450 tons of marine fuel from the freighter, Sealand-Express, which ran aground at Milnerton on Tuesday morning.

The oil is being pumped to other ships via a 320m long pipe and then taken ashore.

The pipe linking the ships has 32 segments, each 10m long and 20cm in diameter. It is similar to the pipe used to pump crude oil to ships from the mainland near Mossel Bay.

The rubber-like material of which the pipe is made, allows it to float. Smit Marine apparently pumped as much as 80 tons of fuel per hour on Friday.

Three carrier ships are used alternately. As soon as one ship is full, the pipe is sealed, disconnected from the ship and left in the water to be linked to another ship.

Clare Gomes, Smit Marine spokesperson, said the company wanted to remove as much of the fuel as possible before a cold front hits the Cape on Saturday. She could not say how much fuel the company would be able to remove.

Containers

If the ship is not light enough at the next spring tide to be dislodged from the sand back, containers would also have to be removed from the ship.

Gomes said they would consider using a floating crane or even a bridge from the mainland to remove the containers. "The ship does not have its own cranes and therefore a third party would be needed to lift the containers.

"The other option is to pack the contents of the containers into smaller containers and to lift these by helicopter as we did in the case of the Jolly Rubino."

When asked what would happen if removing the containers still did not make the ship light enough, Gomes said they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

Apart from damage to the rudder, there is no other damage to the ship. Damage done by the waves would be limited to a small area, Gomes said.

She added that it seemed unlikely at this stage that the ship would break apart.

- Die Burger