[Lamplighter]

Washington Post
9/15/13

Shipwrecked Concordia wrested off Italian reef yet operation slowed by delays and cable glitch

GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy — Using a vast system of steel cables and pulleys,
maritime engineers on Monday gingerly winched the massive hull of the Costa Concordia
off the reef where the cruise ship capsized near an Italian island in January 2012.
But progress in pulling the heavily listing luxury liner to an upright position
was going much slower than expected. Delays meant the delicate operation
— originally scheduled from dawn to dusk Monday —
was not expected to be completed before Tuesday morning.<snip>

Engineers used remote controls to guide a synchronized system of pulleys,
counterweights and huge chains that were looped under the Concordia’s carcass
to delicately nudge the ship free from its rocky seabed. A few hours into the operation,
four of those cables became slack and threatened to become entangled with other cables,
forcing the winching to halt for an hour while workers fixed the problem,
Costa engineer Franco Porcellacchia said.

Later in the rotation process, a series of tanks on the exposed side
of the hull will be filled with water to help pull it down.
That phase should rotate the ship faster than the winching, Porcellacchia said.

As the hull is moved upright, it will come to rest on an underwater platform:







(...They hope...)