National Civil Protection agency chief Franco Gabrielli told islanders on Giglio island Wednesday that crews could try to right the ship as soon as Monday. He stressed that the exact date for the operation will only be known the day before, since the final OK depends upon weather and sea conditions.

The ship will eventually be towed away and scrapped.

The Concordia's hull was gashed by a reef it struck when sailing close to Giglio's rocky shores Jan. 13, 2012. It rapidly took on water and capsized. Its captain is being tried for manslaughter and abandoning ship.

The webcam address:
webcam Giglio Porto Panoramica

ROME (Reuters) - The wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship could be upright again next week, nearly two years after the liner capsized and killed at least 30 people off the Italian coast.

The giant vessel, which has lain partly submerged in shallow waters off the Tuscan island of Giglio since the accident in January 2012, will be rolled off the seabed and onto underwater platforms.

Workers will look for the bodies of two people, an Italian and an Indian unaccounted for since the disaster, as machines haul the 114,000-tonne ship upright and underwater cameras comb the seabed.

The exact day of the Concordia's rotation - known as parbuckling - has yet to be set, but on Wednesday Civil Protection Commissioner Franco Gabrielli said Monday was likely.

The Costa Concordia hit a rock when it maneuver too close to the island, prompting a chaotic evacuation of more than 4,000 passengers and crew, in one of the most dramatic marine accidents in recent history.

Divers have pumped 18,000 metric tons of cement into bags below the ship to support it and prevent it from breaking up in an operation which is expected to last 8-10 hours and is part of a salvage operation estimated to cost at least $300 million.

A buoyancy device acting "like a neck brace for an injured patient" will hold together the ship's bow, and fishing nets will catch debris as it rises from beneath the ship, said Nicholas Sloane, senior salvage master at Titan Salvage.

The salvage team will go through the ship cabin by cabin and had over items found on board to the Italian state prosecutor, and the vessel will be towed away to be dismantled.

Four Costa Concordia crew members and a Costa Cruises company official were sentenced to jail in July for their part in the accident, and the ship's captain Francesco Schettino remains on trial for manslaughter and causing the loss of the ship.

The captain is accused of abandoning ship before all crew and passengers had been rescued. A coastguard's angry phone order to him - "Get back on board, damn it!" - became a catchphrase in Italy after the accident.

[ 09-11-2013: Message edited by: jeremya ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/world/europe/operation-to-raise-costa-concordia-cruise-liner-in-italy.html?hp

GIGLIO, Italy — Operations to raise the Costa Concordia began off the Italian coast on Monday after a three-hour delay caused by a violent overnight storm.

Salvage workers began the delicate process of attempting to rotate the cruise liner into an upright position around 9 a.m. The vessel hit a submerged reef and ran aground in January 2012. Thirty-two people died in the accident.

The sudden storm prevented salvage workers from moving a barge and rubber booms close to the ship.

More than 500 divers, technicians, engineer and biologists have worked to prepare the ship for the operation to rotate it and to minimize the risks to the environment of Giglio Island, a marine sanctuary off the Tuscan coast.

“Everything is under control,” Sergio Girotto, project manager at the salvage company Microperi, said two hours after the scheduled start. “Operations will start shortly.”

The salvage operation is one of the most expensive and challenging salvage operations ever attempted. “It’s an extraordinary operation that has never been done before,” Franco Porcellacchia, project manager for Costa Cruises, the ship’s operator, said at a news conference in Rome last week.

The size and the location of the ship are the most challenging aspects of the project, experts said. The 951-foot ship lies at an extreme angle on two granite reefs about 50 yards from the shore. Preparations for the salvage operation took 14 months, and the cost has ballooned to $799 million from $300 million and could rise further, according to Costa Cruises.

The Concordia has been stabilized through anchors and cement bags, and steel platforms have been built underwater on the port side. Throughout the day on Monday, the salvage crew will use pulleys, strand jacks and steel cables, placed on nine caissons attached to the left side of ship, to slowly dislodge it from the two rocks where it has been laying for 20 months.

At about 20 degrees of rotation, the caissons will start taking in water. The downward force of the water will decrease the rotation speed and help complete the “parbuckling,” a word that originally referred to the sling used to lift a barrel with a double rope passed around it.

The operation will be monitored by engineers and remotely operated vehicle pilots from a control room on a barge close to the bow of the Concordia. If images or sonar show dangerous twisting, the technicians can adjust the process.

A command center on shore will closely follow the salvage operation. If the ship does not rotate, or doesn’t rotate properly, another crew of engineers can intervene.

“There are a lot of unknown facts, so we made a lot of assumptions,” said Nick Sloane, an engineer and senior salvage master with Titan Salvage of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Some are conservative assumptions, and some are optimistic.”

The operation carries many risks, Mr. Sloane said, including unpredictable weather. Its second enemy is time: The longer the vessel stays where it is, the higher the risk is that it cannot be removed in one piece.

Salvage masters and the Italian authorities have already prepared for possible complications. Most of the fuel was siphoned off within months of the shipwreck. But the floating city that once transported and entertained over 4,000 people still contains chemicals, oily lubricants and diesel fuel from the engine rooms that could leak into the pristine waters for which Giglio, a popular tourist spot, is known.

During the rotation process, the region’s environmental agency will take samples and monitor the water quality. Salvage officials and the Italian authorities expressed confidence that the operation would succeed and said that the chance that the ship could break apart was “remote.”

“The whole project inevitably had many questions marks, such an operation on such a big ship is unprecedented,” said Emilio Campana, the director of the research office for naval and maritime engineering at Italy’s National Research Council. “They need to extract the ship from the rocks and rotate it almost at the same time. They’ve never tried anything like this on an intact vessel, imagine on the Costa Concordia.”

There are many uncertainties about the structural damage that the ship has sustained and how the attempt to right it will be affected.

“Ships are designed to float upright, not to lie down under their own weight, it’s an unnatural position,” Mr. Campanasaid. “The structure is broken and somewhat deformed, no one knows how it will react to the rotation movements.”

quote:

---

Originally posted by PamM:
LOL.. and the paint dried long ago, but she is coming up nicely it seems I am sure they, or someone, will produce a time lapse clip to watch.

Pam

---

this whole thing has me laughing with the number of major and not so major media outlets touting "Live Coverage". All these journos have literally jammed Giglio and all they have done is sit in the media tent all day waiting for an event that is not an event.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tim in Fort Lauderdale:
[...] for an event that is not an event.

---

We can also see the damage on her starboard side where she came to rest on the 2 rock formations.

[ 09-16-2013: Message edited by: FuzzyFish ]

Here is a bow view of 30 minutes ago

Not going to post screen grabs, I'm sure we'll have plenty of high res photos of her sitting there soon enough.

Looks like most of her weight was being supported by the forward superstructure. I'm surprised that the ship is still that intact and the hull still so straight and true.

Incredible.

[ 09-17-2013: Message edited by: FuzzyFish ]