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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2006 
Latest Plan: A Channel Along Stranded Ship
 Sandra Dibble - Union-Tribune
| | A crane was used to lift personnel onto the stranded APL Panama yesterday. Before a rock jetty was built, workers had to get to the ship by boat. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) |
Ensenada – Over the past two months, they've pulled at its bow, drilled holes in its hull, used cranes and helicopters to lighten its load. But the APL Panama, an 874-foot container ship, still clings to the sandy beach where it has sat since Christmas Day.
Now salvage crews are preparing a new tactic: creating a channel alongside the stranded ship with a specialized dredger vessel, the Francesco di Giorgio.
The channel would be “as close as possible to the container ship in order to tow it via the canal to deeper waters,” said Adam Van Cauwenberghe, a regional manager in Mexico City for the Jan de Nul Group, the dredger's Belgian owners.
With the Francesco di Giorgio's arrival expected today, salvage crews are hoping to write the final chapter of the long-running saga that began when the APL Panama ran aground in shallow waters 1½ miles from Ensenada's port.
The ship's fate has been followed closely around the world, from factories in Mexico, to suppliers in Asia, to the vessel's owners in Germany, and to London-based maritime insurance clubs.
Repeated attempts to move the ship off the beach with tugboats and a barge equipped with powerful hydraulic pullers have failed. The bow has been moved 50 degrees toward open water, but not far enough to float the ship, Capt. José Luis Ríos Hernández, Ensenada's harbor master, said this week.
Another major pulling effort is expected Monday morning.
The ship's position, parallel to shore, has made for an especially challenging scenario, Ríos said, and the vessel is now hemmed in by sand piled as high as 16 feet on its starboard side.
An attempt last month to blow away the sand with a giant underwater pipe failed when the pipe broke in the surf. Earlier this month, salvage teams tried a different tack, drilling 200 small holes near the bow into the hull's starboard side, and blowing high-pressure air through them to disperse the sand.
The latest sand-removal plans involve the dredger vessel, which is 313 feet long and is designed to operate in shallow water. Named for the 15th century Italian artist Francesco di Giorgio, it has been sailing from the Nicaraguan port of Corinth, where it was doing maintenance work on a navigational channel.
As they work to remove the sand, salvage crews also have been lightening the APL Panama's load.
Titan Maritime LLC, the Florida-based company leading the salvage efforts, has been lifting off containers with a Sikorsky Sky Crane helicopter and a giant crawler crane, perched at the end of a temporary jetty, along with two smaller cranes on board the ship.
Victor Manuel Celis Dueñas, customs director for Ensenada's port, said the crews are hoping to remove 1,200 of the 1,800 containers originally on board. By Wednesday, the APL Panama's owners reported that more than 700 containers weighing more than 10,000 tons had been removed, about a third of the original cargo weight.
Cargo owners whose containers are off the vessel are being encouraged to take them away, after posting a bond with the salvage company. Some are sending their own trucks to pick up the containers, while others are loading them onto other container ships.
The strain of the past several weeks has caused some damage to the APL Panama. But Titan Maritime representatives have been telling local officials that the vessel is essentially in good shape.
Human error on the part of the captain apparently led to the vessel's grounding. Testimony of the captain and first mate indicate that the vessel violated port rules by entering restricted waters without a port pilot on board to guide it.
The APL Panama's grounding off a residential neighborhood has been of great local interest, initially drawing thousands of spectators a day to Playa Conalep, a broad beach off a residential neighborhood. But the area has been roped off, and the crowds have thinned considerably.
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com |
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