Ehime Maru move delayed
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Engineers will miss their mid-September target date to move the Ehime Maru to shallow water and a string of setbacks in the past two weeks may increase the mission's $40 million cost, the Navy said yesterday.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
The ship should be ready to move by late this month.
Capt. Bert Marsh, the Navy's supervisor of salvage and diving, briefs reporters on a new procedure to try to raise the Ehime Maru's bow out of the mud.
The Navy also said salvage experts must now deal with a new problem created this week as they labored to solve a previous problem: When they lifted the stern of the Ehime Maru to make room for rigging cables, the bow of the ship was driven into the soft sea floor.
At the heart of the situation is the Navy's struggle to get two heavy duty lifting straps beneath the 830-ton Ehime Maru. They are the only way the ship can be raised from 2,000 feet of water and moved to a depth where divers can safely enter its hull and search for the bodies of nine missing people.
Although the first method failed to clear a complete path under the hull, the second — lifting the stern — did allow the Navy to successfully place the aft lifting strap, said Capt. Bert Marsh, the Navy's supervisor of salvage and diving.
To place the remaining lifting strap, engineers will now have to clear an area on either side of the bow where the ship's hawse pipes are located. The hawse pipes are holes on both sides of the hull for the ship's anchor chains.
Marsh said the bow of the Ehime Maru will be picked up by rigging the hawse pipes and the ship will be moved a short, but unspecified distance to flat, firm sea floor.
The ship will then be lifted once more by the same cables so the remaining lifting strap can be put in place.
"We have incurred some additional time because we have had to do dredging," Marsh said. "That shouldn't be too much of a delay. This remains a very difficult operation."
Marsh could not say how long it would take to do the dredging because special underwater pumps must still be flown in from the Mainland.
Marsh said most of a ship's weight is in the aft sections and that will help prevent further damage when engineers raise the Ehime Maru by the bow.
"We are taking advantage of the weight of the ship itself," Marsh said. "We won't be pulling nearly as much as it seems. It's basically a teeter totter."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
