sylens - 3-10-2006 at 10:11 AM
yesss.
tugs pulled her out at 5am with high tide assisting. did not see it. heard on radio and then looked out my window. she is out in the bay awaiting
permission to leave once cleanup is completed and all necessary payments are made to the port.
we've lost a circus and won back our beach.
AHHHHHHH MAY ZZZZZZZZING ! !
djh - 3-10-2006 at 10:24 AM
Finally ! ! ! 
Diver - 3-10-2006 at 10:33 AM
OOOOPS, I lose the bet ! 
Tomas Tierra - 3-10-2006 at 10:53 AM
so much for the surf resort!!
Bob H - 3-10-2006 at 10:56 AM
Poof! There goes the casino idea...
Container ship Panama set free at last
BajaNews - 3-10-2006 at 04:10 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20060310-0...
March 10, 2006
ENSENADA ? A container ship stuck in the sand since last Christmas Day is finally free.
The APL Panama, stripped of the containers that had been stacked above deck, floated away from the beach at 4:41 a.m. Friday.
Tugboats pulled the 874-foot vessel free from the sand after a channel had been dredged close to the ship.
After the vessel was freed, the APL Panama was about two miles offshore in rough seas, held in place by tugboats at her bow and stern. Mexican Navy
vessels and helicopters remained nearby, as did a containment vessel to pick up any possible oil spills.
?It's being taken to a safe anchorage for inspection,? APL spokesman Mike Zampa said from the company's regional headquarters in Oakland. ?There's no
apparent damage to the cargo, no leaks or spills. There's an environmental team on standby to make sure we don't have any problems.?
The dredger Francesco di Giorgio had to be brought up from Nicaragua to dig a channel near the APL Panama after repeated attempts to pull her free
with tugboats and other equipment failed.
-----------------------
Photo by JOHN GIBBINS
[Edited on 3-10-2006 by BajaNews]
Damn,
Hook - 3-10-2006 at 11:11 PM
I had all the girls lined up for Mexico's largest Ladies Bar.
BajaNews - 3-11-2006 at 12:20 AM
3/10/06: The tugboats "Sea Victory" (shown) and "Gladiator" were the two tugs on the bow, while the tug "Leader" maintained a line from the stern to
control the newly floated vessel. Photo by JOHN GIBBINS
Bruce R Leech - 3-11-2006 at 08:14 AM
I'm am surprised. I thought they would take it out with torches in little pieces
Pompano - 3-11-2006 at 08:30 AM
Wha....? tugboats? Was there a ship stuck somewhere?
Al G - 3-11-2006 at 04:18 PM
I haven't been staying up so does anyone know how much import duty the goverment collected on the cargo?
Beached ship finally freed
BajaNews - 3-11-2006 at 10:39 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060311-9999-7m11...
Cargo vessel ran aground Christmas Day off Ensenada
By Sandra Dibble
March 11, 2006
ENSENADA ? It took more than two months of pulling, lifting, blowing and dredging. Yesterday, the APL Panama finally broke free from the sandy beach
where it ran aground Christmas Day.
It was 4:40 a.m. and raining steadily when the 874-foot container ship returned to the sea. On shore, a handful of witnesses could see its lights come
back on. Aboard ship, fireworks sounded, lit by salvors celebrating the occasion.
Less than three hours later, the vessel was two miles offshore, undergoing inspection of its hull, while bulldozers worked to restore the beach where
the ship spent the past 75 days.
?We've overcome the critical point,? said Capt. Jos? Luis R?os Hern?ndez, Ensenada's harbor master.
Now comes the next challenge: paying the bill. Under general average, the commonly used international legal procedure, the expenses will be shared by
the vessel's German owners, Mare Britannicum Schiffahrtsgesellschaft MBH & Co.; APL, the global container transportation company that chartered
it; and the numerous cargo interests. The amounts are subject to negotiation.
With its propeller damaged, the APL Panama isn't going anywhere soon. The ship can't leave Ensenada until the salvors, the ship's owners and Mexican
government inspectors have examined its condition. In addition, Mexican authorities won't allow the vessel to leave until the beach where it was
stranded is restored.
The APL Panama ran aground at 6:12 p.m. Dec. 25, as it prepared to enter the port of Ensenada on a regularly scheduled trans-Pacific run. Mexican
authorities attribute the incident to human error on the part of the vessel's Croatian captain, Zupan Branko; sworn testimony suggests he broke port
rules by steering the ship into restricted waters without waiting for the guidance of a port pilot.
Over the weeks, the vessel has generated widespread interest in Ensenada, drawing thousands to Playa Conalep, a broad sandy beach off a residential
neighborhood south of the port.
An Ensenada taxi driver composed a corrido, a song telling the ship's story, and when residents celebrated a pre-Lenten carnival last month, the APL
Panama was featured as a float.
?We got used to seeing it, it belonged to us,? Francisco Cese?a, a 33-year-old Ensenada truck driver, said early yesterday as he arrived to haul away
pieces of a temporary rock-and-sand jetty built for the APL Panama. ?Now they've gone and stolen it.?
The APL Panama was loaded with more than 1,800 containers when it ran aground, many of them holding electronic components from Asia for factories in
Mexico. Nissan, Sony and Panasonic are among the affected companies.
The APL's owners hired Titan Maritime LLC, a Florida-based salvage company, to move the ship, which was trapped in sand parallel to shore. The salvors
tried numerous approaches: pulling at its bow with tugboats and hydraulic pulling machines; lifting off more nearly 1,300 containers to lighten its
load; moving sand by blowing air through tiny holes drilled into the hull.
Last month, they hired a hopper-dredger vessel, the Francesco di Giorgio, owned by a Belgian company, Jan de Nul. The vessel dug a channel near the
APL Panama's bow, about 260 feet wide and 30 feet deep, said Adam Van Cauwenberghe, the company's representative in Mexico City.
R?os, the harbor master, attributed yesterday's successful refloating to the combination of approaches. Pulling the APL Panama toward the newly
dredged channel yesterday were three tugboats and two hydraulic pullers attached directly to the APL Panama.
While the salvage efforts have generated widespread interest ? both from curious residents and members of the maritime community worldwide ? hardly
anyone was there to witness the floating. R?os was among the few on the beach to see the ship float away in the early-morning darkness.
But word soon got out ? around Ensenada, across the United States and across the Atlantic to London and Germany as David Stirling, Titan's Scottish
salvage master sent out a terse e-mail message from the APL Panama: ?Vessel refloated at 4:40 lt (local time).?
-----------------------
Photo by JOHN GIBBINS
3/10/06: The tugboat "Leader" maintained a line from the stern of the ship while two other tugs had lines on the front to control the newly floated
vessel.
A master of ship salvage
BajaNews - 3-22-2006 at 02:04 AM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060318-9999-1n18...
Expert got vessel floating again after it was stranded near Ensenada for 10 weeks
By Sandra Dibble
March 18, 2006
He has rescued oil tankers while under hostile fire in the Persian Gulf, boarded the ghostly remains of a container ship near Singapore on which all
the crew members had burned to death, risked rough and frigid seas off an Icelandic beach.
But when David Stirling first set eyes on the APL Panama, the 835-foot container ship that became stranded on an Ensenada beach on Christmas Day, the
47-year-old salvage master had only one thought: ?Wow.?
?I've seen ships on the beach before, but nothing as big as this one,? Stirling remembered thinking this week as he was making his way home to
Scotland. ?It's either going to be an easy job or not.?
It was not.
This month ? more than 10 weeks after Stirling first saw the vessel Dec. 30 ? the APL Panama was towed off the beach, with small cracks in its hull
and its propeller damaged. The effort is headed for maritime history, as one of the largest commercial salvage operations ever undertaken.
The APL Panama was worth an estimated $50 million, Stirling said, and its cargo at least twice that amount, much of it electronic components and car
parts from Asia for factories in Mexico. Salvage industry insiders say the final cost for saving the APL Panama could reach tens of millions of
dollars. But no one knows just how much ? that is now subject to negotiation between the vessel's German owner and the Florida-based salvage company,
Titan Maritime LLC. If they can't agree, they'll ask an arbitrator to step in.
The APL Panama was salvaged under the time-honored ?no cure, no pay,? rule peculiar to the profession. The salvage company and its parent company,
Crowley Maritime Corp., risked their resources, agreeing to negotiate for compensation only if successful.
If seven tugboats, five hydraulic pullers, a puller barge, a helicopter, a dredger, three cranes and numerous pumps and generators provided the brawn,
the senior salvage master for Titan Maritime was the brains, leading a crew of 24 salvage specialists that included divers, welders, cutters and a
naval architect.
?I love the challenge, the feeling you get when you eventually refloat,? said Stirling, who speaks so softly that a listener must sometimes lean
forward to catch what he's saying. ?The crew, they're not the normal guys that you find, you have to be a little bit different to do this kind of
job.?
On a public beach just south of Ensenada's harbor, this was an especially visible assignment. From the start, the stuck APL Panama was a popular
tourist attraction, but it was also a window into the world of maritime salvage, one of the world's oldest and more unusual businesses.
In more than two decades as a salvage master, Stirling has salvaged some 150 ships. There was the Ocean Blessing, with its crew burned to death in the
Malacca Straits. The Alva Star, run into a cliff at full cruising speed in the Aegean Sea. The Vikartindur, driven by a gale onto a remote Icelandic
beach. And for three years of his career, oil tankers on fire in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
?There's something in the blood of the salvor that makes him want to do it,? said Jim Shirley, a former salvage master, now practicing maritime law in
New York City. ?The salvor is man against the sea. He goes out into the roughest weather when everyone else is seeking refuge in the harbor.?
Of 51 members worldwide of the London-based International Salvage Union, only a handful of maritime salvage companies have the resources to mobilize
for a major salvage operation anywhere in the world such as the APL Panama, said Michael Lacey, the group's secretary-general. And only a handful of
salvage masters have the experience and reputation to lead such endeavors.
?A salvage master is an interesting bird, they have to understand vessel stability, strength of materials, and characteristics of steel,? said Tuuli
Messer, a professor at the California Maritime Academy who has studied the salvage industry. ?They're running very dangerous operations, money is at
stake, big machinery.?
Salvage can be as simple as towing a disabled vessel. But it can involve any range of maritime disasters ? from tanker fires to collisions to
groundings to wreck removal.
The job requires much flexibility, said Richard Fredericks, executive director of the American Salvage Association: ?Each case is different, different
vessel, different geographic location, different weather conditions, tidal conditions,? Fredericks said. ?In each case, there are certain known
elements, and many unknown elements. . . . It's not a static situation.?
Salvage has its origins in antiquity, with its rules developed to prevent plunder of stranded ships by offering generous rewards for those who helped
save the property. To this day, more than half of salvage contracts involve ?no cure, no pay? arrangements, often under a contract known as the Lloyds
Open Form.
The industry has been changing in recent years. As ships get larger and more complicated, salvors must keep up with the changes. Better navigational
instruments and stricter regulation have worked to decrease accidents. These days, salvors are expected to place priority on preventing oil spills and
other environmental accidents.
Stirling's low-key style is not typical for salvage masters, but he is among the most effective, said Michael Mallin, an attorney for a London-based
maritime law firm that represents Titan.
?In a job mostly populated by larger-than-life characters, he is one of the most understated,? Mallin said. ?But he gets a lot of respect from his
salvage crews, and he is very good at thinking outside the box in a business where it is often necessary to come up with novel solutions.?
After it grounded, the APL Panama sat along the beach in quiet seas on a beach off a residential neighborhood, close enough for passersby to walk up
and touch at low tide.
The prime enemy was not exploding oil tanks, nor enemy bullets, nor turbulent weather, but sand so fine ?it was like concrete when it was packed in,?
Stirling said.
In cases of groundings, ?99 times out of 100, you can just go in there and take some ballast off, take a little bit of cargo off, take the fuel off
and pretty much pull on it and remove it,? Stirling said.
?In this case, it was not that simple. I've never seen a vessel embedded in sand like that.?
From the start, Stirling's plan involved pulling the bow out to sea.
But as tugs and hydraulic pullers heaved at the bow, walls of sand would build up on the starboard side of the hull, at times reaching 20 feet.
Bad weather allows a ship to roll and move, ?we're always looking for a bit of swell, so it lifts the ship up and down.? But day after day, salvors
were confronted with good weather.
To get the sand moving, they drilled tiny holes into the ship's bow, pressing air through them. The tugs' propellers also helped wash the sand away,
as did a submersible pump.
To lighten the ship's load, a helicopter lifted off the lighter containers; the others were eventually taken off by crane, delivered to trucks on a
temporary jetty.
Eventually, a dredger vessel was brought in to dig a channel near the bow. Finally, at 4:40 a.m. on March 10, with barely anybody watching, the APL
Panama was once again afloat.
?Everything we did from start to end contributed to it,? Stirling said. ?Very often you get to the point where you think, 'Is there any point in
carrying on?' Perhaps the APL Panama was getting to that point as well, we tried so many things.?
Critics watching the operation from shore say it would have moved faster had the dredger been brought in at the start. But none was readily available,
Stirling said. And in the first two months of the operation, he said, the water by the bow was too shallow for the dredger to operate.
Such questioning of Stirling's decisions is likely to multiply as the vessel's owners and Titan negotiate the price of the salvage. It's part of the
territory for salvage masters. Under the typical Lloyds Open Form contract, salvage companies stress their efforts and sacrifice to save a vessel,
while the shipowners point out the flaws.
Yesterday, the APL Panama sat anchored outside Ensenada harbor, undergoing inspections. It will probably be towed to China for repairs, Stirling said.
He was on his way elsewhere as well, to his farm outside Edinburgh, Scotland, a place with grass and trees and Icelandic sheep and horses.
?When I go home, I have nothing to do with the sea at all,? he said. ?I just want to stay there and not go anywhere.?