The salvage of the stranded car carrier Golden Ray is accelerating. Salvors on the heavy-lift barge VB-10,000 are using a heavy chain to cut the ship into sections to be carried away by barge. The recently completed the second cut, separating the ship’s stern, which has been lifted onto Barge 455-8 to be hauled away to a recycling facility in Louisiana to be scrapped. On-water response teams recovered oil released from the wreck during lifting operations.
The first cut, which separated the bow of the ship, took approximately three weeks to complete while the second cut took only eight days. There is some concern that now that the bow and stern sections of the ship have been removed, that managing oil and debris from the ship will become more challenging.
The ship carrying 4200 cars rolled over in shallow water shortly after departing the Port of Brunswick, Georgia on St. Simons Sound in September 2019.
Did they manage the cut so the engine can be resold after getting a overhaul?
I don’t know. My guess is that they would prefer not to have to cut through the engine block in any case.
I read elsewhere that they were expecting escaping oils after this cut as it was in way of the engine room with all the associated ancillaries from which fluids could not be easily drained completely before cutting.
The oil is likely to be the fuel tanks. As the inline engines are dry sumps with forced lubrication. IE the crank case isnt like an automotive type engine with vast quantities of oil for crankshaft and rods to splash into.
Thhe biggest problem was cutting through the propellor shaft which appears to have gine well.
Well done chaps!