Book Board Chat

In World News . . .

The other night DH and I watched a program about the salvage operation that was underway of the Costa Concordia. I think it was on 60 Minutes. What a massive undertaking just to get to the point to where they would be able to start the operation of getting it upright which was completed early yesterday morning.

Both of the links below have time-lapsed footage of it being righted, the first link is longer with the crew celebrating etc. Second link is just the ship being uprighted. It was something never done on this scale before. Engineers from around the world worked together to accomplish it.

Massive salvage operation to set Costa Concordia cruise liner upright

Salvage crews completed setting the wreck of the Costa Concordia upright early Tuesday after a 19-hour-long operation off the Italian island of Giglio, where the huge cruise liner capsized 20 months ago.

Perhaps the most complex and expensive maritime salvage operation ever attempted saw the 114,500-ton ship pulled upright by a series of huge jacks and cables and set on artificial platforms drilled into the rocky sea bed.

After a salvage operation estimated to have cost more than 600 million euros ($800 million), the hulk will remain in place for months more while it is stabilized and refloated before being towed away to be broken up for scrap.

"The rotation happened the way we thought it would happen and the way we hoped it would happen," said Franco Porcellacchia, leader of Costa Cruise's technical team, according to Reuters. "It was a perfect operation, I would say."

The daring attempt to pull the shipwrecked ocean liner upright began early Monday.

Full article with longer video: http://tinyurl.com/mb4wfaq

Shorter Version:

Time-lapse footage shows the wreckage of the Costa Concordia cruise ship being pulled completely upright during a complicated, 19-hour operation.

http://www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/video/2824783/

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