Cruise Ship Wreck Removal Underway Amid New Questions Of Cause

by Chris Owen on

It’s been nearly seven months since the cruise ship Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy, leaving 32 dead. After lying on its side since the January 13th grounding, Costa Concordia will next be stood back up, re-floated and towed to an Italian port. But what looks to be a simple operation will involve the coordination of several salvage companies and cost millions.

A big part of the salvage plan to remove the wreck calls for 30 watertight boxes, called cassions, to re-float the ship in one piece. Once the ship has been stabilized, caissons will be fixed to the upper side of the hull and gradually filled with water as part of the operation to right the ship.

Using a system of hydraulic jacks fixed to an undersea platform, the ship will be brought upright, underwater. When the ship is upright, caissons full of water also will be fixed to the other side of the hull. Then the caissons on both sides will be filled with air to re-float the wreck as we see in this simulation.


Salvage operations began with the removal of fuel from the ship to address environmental concerns. Once the wreck is removed, the focus goes back on to the seabed with a cleanup operation devised to conserve the marine environment. The preliminary stage is expected to finish by the end of July, followed by the ship stabilization phase in August.

Looking back, history will remember the Concordia event as more of a near miss than a Titanic-like disaster.

Looking forward, via an Operational Safety Review performed by the cruise industry, improved safety measures have been put in place to prevent an incident like this from happening again.

This week, new information revealed in an Associated Press report raises more questions. The black box stopped recording before the ship was evacuated. Watertight doors, designed to keep the ship afloat, were left open. Unauthorized maps were found in the bridge.

Did these new discoveries have something to do with the wreck? That is unknown at this time so stay tuned as this story continues.

[Flickr photo by EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection]

First Gay Cruise To Visit Casablanca Turned Away

by Chris Owen on

Currently sailing on what was promoted as “the first gay cruise to visit Casablanca,” gay and lesbian passengers on a chartered cruise were turned away by Moroccan authorities over the weekend. The Problem? Morocco’s Islamic religion and the laws of the North African country punish homosexuality.


Holland America Line’s 2106-passenger Nieuw Amsterdam was chartered by RSVP Vacations for a seven-night, round-trip Mediterranean sailing to Barcelona that began June 29 and will end July 6.

The RSVP website highlights each stop on the itinerary, saying “we’ll be the first gay cruise to visit Casablanca, Morocco’s most famous coastal city,” inviting those on the special sailing to “bargain in the New Media markets, explore the Hassan Mosque, or head over to magical Marrakech.”

RSVP Vacations specializes in organizing tourist trips for gay and lesbian travelers. As FoxNews confirmed, on Saturday, RSVP’s agent in the port of Casablanca reported, “the authorities have cancelled the scheduled July 1 visit despite having previously confirmed it.”


Scheduled during the call in Casablanca was a visit to the Hassan II Mosque (pictured) and to several traditional marketplaces in the city.

After the stop in Casablanca, the ship was scheduled to sail to Cadiz, also in southern Spain, and then to continue on to Ibiza in the Balearic Islands, then to the eastern Spanish city of Valencia before ending in Barcelona.

Sunday, the ship docked in the southern Spanish port of Malaga after Moroccan authorities prohibited it from making its scheduled port of call in Casablanca.

[Flickr photo by Alex E. Proimos]

Cruise Lines To Plug In Ships, Finally

by Chris Owen on

More than a year ago, Brooklyn’s Red Hook cruise ship terminal was to become the first East Coast cruise operation with the capability to let ships “plug in” and access power off the grid. A year later, ships have still not plugged in to cleaner, shore-side electric power and continue to spew fumes due to a $4 million price increase along the way. Now, Port Authority officials say they will approve the project and get going on it this month.

“The shore power project I expect will be on the Port Authority agenda for the June meeting,” Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye told the New York Daily News. “We’re working with our colleagues in city government to see what help they can provide and those discussions are ongoing. The environmental impacts to the local community – obviously it is an immensely populated area – are real and we’re focused on them.”

Concerned parties including state and local officials, Con Ed, Carnival Corporation and owners of ships that will use the facility, worked and debated for years to figure out how much electricity would cost and how to pay for it, before finally announcing a deal last April to split the cost.

Plugging in cruise ships is a big focus of cruise line environmental efforts, with several west coast ports already equipped to do so. When cruise ships come in to the Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal they bring a lot of travelers. That business is great for the local economy. Each cruise ship also brings some 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide, 95 tons of nitrous oxide and 6.5 tons of particulate matter annually when they park and burn their diesel engines – bad news for the humans that live near by.

“It will be the equivalent of removing 5,000 cars per year from the road annually,” Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation told the New York Times.

In California, the ports of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco already have the ability for ships to plug in.


Port of San Diego Completes Shore Power System from Port of San Diego on Vimeo.

Photo by Ian Barbour via Compfight

Eco-Travel Might Be Cool With Floating Resort

by Chris Owen on

Let’s face it: eco-travel is a tough sell to many travelers. Especially considering that our impact on the environment is commonly not a big factor when planning a trip. Still, as more travelers have begun to realize the importance of preserving the environment, the need is there. In the future, eco-travelers may have a green cruise option in the Solar Floating Resort (SFR) concept.

Powered entirely by solar photovoltaic panels that cover it like a skin, this sleek boat/resort/luxury submarine is just the sort of place Italian industrial designer Michele Puzzolante imagines.

“Solar energy technologies such as photovoltaic panels could provide a third of the world’s energy by 2060 if politicians commit to limiting global warming,” says Puzzolante on her Solar Floating Resort website.

Puzzolante’s SFR relies entirely on non-polluting solar power and uses modular manufacturing techniques currently being used in the naval and automobile industries, kind of like LEGO pieces.

The whole thing can be put together in a matter of weeks and can be used for terrestrial as well as floating applications as we see in this video.



Queens To Meet In London For Big Event

by Chris Owen on

This June 5 is a big event in the UK as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrates 60 years on the throne. Cunard Line will bring Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations to a close with the first ever Cunard Royal Rendezvous in the fleet’s home port of Southampton, England.

Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth will be brought within close proximity of each other as a fireworks and special effects display will light up the evening sky. Queen Mary 2 will then lead Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria in single file down the Solent, a strait separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England, as all three ships set out on their celebratory Jubilee voyages.

This is not the first time the three Queens of the Cunard fleet have met. In 2011 they met in New York City, but the first meeting of the three queens was in 2008.

“In January 2008, Cunard Line’s first Rendezvous of their three Queens took place. It was quite exciting as it was the first time Cunard had three ships with Queen in the name and all three were together,” said Stewart Chiron CEO of CruiseGuy.com. “It was the last time for many to see Queen Elizabeth 2, as she would depart the fleet later that year.”

Enrichment programming on board the ships will feature lectures by former BBC Royal correspondent Jennie Bond; Professor Herbert Kerrigan QC, one of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II‘s Counsel in Scotland; and ITN royal commentator Robert Jobson.

Also on board will be a rare collection of Royal art, including watercolors by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and lithographs by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Guests sailing on board Cunard ships will enjoy a Commemorative Dinner followed by a Grand Ball. Cunard will also screen live BBC World News coverage of the celebrations across the fleet beginning at 9:00 a.m. (GMT).



[Flickr photo by micamica]