The parbuckling operation has been successfully completed around 4:00 a.m this morning. Now the 950-foot long Costa Concordia wreck, with its gross tonnage of 114,500 GT, is upright and resting safely on the specially built artificial sea bed, at a depth of approximately 30 meters.
The operation started on Monday at around 9.00 a.m., almost three hours later than expected, due to overnight bad weather conditions on the Giglio island. Around 7:00 p.m. the salvage officials reported that the strandjack operation had been temporarily suspended for an hour due to maintenance work. It was in fact necessary to intervene with a dedicated team to avoid slack cables from interfering with the tensioned cables.
The parbuckling of the Costa Concordia has been completed after 19 hours.
Now the salvage teams will spend a month stabilising the wreck and preparing for the re-floating before it is towed away for scrap.
This project is the most expensive and most sophisticated maritime wreck recovery ever performed and it has been estimated to be worth more than 600 million euros ($795 million).
[mappress] Press Release, September 17, 2013