Pratibha Cauvery salvage - wire snaps; wait prolongs

To the vast crowd most of whom were seeing a ship at close quarters for the first time – the salvage operation was perplexing.  The crowd was wondering how can such a big ship that too struck in the sand, could be pulled out by a single thread attached to a boat much smaller in size. The concept of salvage, the physics of pull, bollard, tide  nothing mattered, as they had come to see some action.  Some thought that just like a tow on road, the ship MT Pratibha Cauvery would be pulled before their very eyes and might disappear.

The camera persons and media persons had a field day – announcers stood to the background of mammoth ship, spoke of the ship, of the Tug and of the crowd that had gathered there.  For hours together nothing happened.  This ship had no cargo and was low on fuel and hence all that mattered was almost its LDT  ‘Light Displacement Tonnage’ which in simple terms is the weight of water displaced by the ship – the mass of the ship excluding cargo, fuel,ballast, stores, passengers, crew, but with water in boilers to steaming level. Displacement is a measurement of mass, and should not be confused with similarly named measurements of volume or capacity such as net tonnage, gross tonnage, or deadweight tonnage.

Alas, the salvage operations suffered a blow as in the afternoon, the rope connecting the ship to Malviya snapped.  As reported in TOI, Salvage experts had strategized to wait for a tide which would add at least one metre to the height of the water, when the ship could be pulled out of the sand. Around 3.40pm today [8^th Nov 12] the polypropylene rope attached to the bow of the ship snapped. Now the operation has to restart afresh. 

TOI states : "Pratibha Cauvery is in very shallow waters, which is only about four metres deep. We tied a rope to its bow and used a barge to take the other end of the rope beyond 400 metres into the sea, where it was deeper enough for the tug vessel to operate from," said Captain Ilan Cheran of Accord Marine Surveyors assisting the salvage operations. The experts were waiting for tides at 6am, 10am and 3pm. "Till 3pm, the beached vessel refused to budge. Around 3.40pm, the rope snapped," an official said. Now the experts will have to re-ascertain the strength of the rope and explore other strategies.There was to be more trouble for the vessel which had last voyaged from Haldia to Chennai with oil cargo in the last week of September, when the Madras high court, hearing a petition from a relative of a dead sailor, ruled that the ship should not sail l out of its territorial jurisdiction till Friday, even if it was salvaged.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar. 

8th Nov. 2012..