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 News from Around the Americas | April 2006 
Once-Stuck Ship is Headed to Asia
 Sandra Dibble - Union-Tribune
| | The Christmas Day grounding of the APL Panama was a matter of minutes. Dislodging it from a sandy Ensenada beach took 75 days. Getting the German-owned container ship released altogether took nearly four months. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) |
The container ship APL Panama, which ran aground on the beach just south of the entrance to Ensenada harbor on Dec. 25, was finally floated free about 4 a.m. on March 10.
At 5:40 a.m. yesterday, 116 days after it ran into shallow waters south of the port's entrance, the 855-foot vessel was finally towed away, with no cargo on board, as it launched a trans-Pacific journey to an Asian repair yard.
“It was quite an experience,” said Jens Meier-Hedde, managing partner of the firm that owns the vessel, reached at his office in Bremen, Germany. “We have never, ever had anything like this.”
The floating of the APL Panama was one of the biggest salvage operations involving a container ship ever undertaken. The events brought international attention to Ensenada, a city of 350,000 residents with a growing commercial port.
Capt. José Luis Ríos Hernández, Ensenada's harbor master, gave the vessel final permission to leave late Tuesday after several Mexican government agencies signed off on its departure.
The APL Panama's owners first had to post a $2 million bond with Mexico's environmental protection agency, Profepa. Ricardo Castellanos Percevault, the agency's top official in Baja California, said the bond is a guarantee against any potential damages while they await the results of a study on the long-term environmental effects caused by the grounding and subsequent salvage efforts.
The owners, Mare Britannicum Schiffahrtsgesellschaft MBH & Co., told Ensenada port authorities that the vessel was heading for the Philippines, towed by the tug Hua An, a Dutch-owned vessel specializing in heavy lift transportation. The journey is expected to take 45 days, Ríos said.
The APL Panama had left Oakland with 1,805 containers on board and was about to make a regularly scheduled stop in Ensenada as part of its trans-Pacific route when it ran aground Dec. 25. Testimony before port officials points to human error on the part of the Croatian captain, Zupan Branko.
After its March 10 floating, the vessel spent more than 40 days anchored offshore, entering the port only briefly to discharge 513 containers that remained on board after the salvage operation by Titan Maritime LLC.
Meier-Hedde said that the lengthy wait for the ship's departure was partly due to the salvors' reluctance to have the vessel come into port.
“The salvors had a lien on the containers, and there was a concern that under Mexican laws, this lien of the salvors would be jeopardized,” he said.
But Todd Busch, vice president of Titan Maritime, said Meier-Hedde's account was not accurate, and he pointed out that it took weeks for the tug to arrive. The Hua An made it to Ensenada only this week.
“If the tug would have been here 30 days, and they were still sitting around, then we would talk about it,” Busch said.
Titan Maritime must now negotiate its compensation with the owner, and if they can't agree they will settle before a London-based arbitrator.
Under a maritime principle known as general average, the costs will be shared among the owner; APL, the container transportation company that chartered the vessel; and the various companies with cargo on the ship.
“I'm convinced we have a couple hundred interested parties, if not more,” Meier-Hedde said. |
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