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Cruise News for the Corporate Travel Professional

September 2013 Edition

Costa Concordia raised from the reef

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GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy (AP) — A complex system of pulleys and counterweights on Monday began pulling upright the Costa Concordia cruise ship from its side on a Tuscan reef where it capsized in 2012, an anxiously awaited operation of a kind that has never been attempted on such a huge liner.

Engineer Sergio Girotto said the operation began at about 9 a.m. local time on Monday, three hours late.

By midday, Girotto said they have succeeded in wresting the hull of the shipwrecked Concordia from the reef and that cameras did not immediately reveal any sign of two bodies that were never recovered from the 32 who died during the disaster.

The delay was due to an early morning storm that pushed back a floating command room center from its position close to the wreckage. There, engineers using remote controls were guiding a synchronized leverage system of pulleys, counterweights and huge chains looped under the Concordia's carcass to delicately nudge the ship free from its rocky seabed perch just outside Giglio Island's harbor.

The goal is to raise it from its side by 65 degrees to vertical, as a ship would normally be, for eventual towing.

The operation, known in nautical parlance as parbuckling, is a proven method to raise capsized vessels.