Barge crews will start at the weekend to remove more than 2,000 containers from the stricken cargo vessel MSC Napoli which is grounded off the south coast of England, the ship's managers said Thursday. Two giant barges, one from the Dutch port of Rotterdam and the other from Rouen in France, were heading across the Channel to carry out the operation, said Zodiac Maritime Agencies of London.
Bigfoot, a barge equipped with two cranes, left Rotterdam Wednesday and is due to arrive Friday to unload the containers and transfer them to Boa Barge 21, which will take them to the nearby English port of Portland.
A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said the weather-dependent operation could last five months.
"It will be a careful and slow operation," according to the spokesman, who said that the Napoli's containers would have taken just a few days to unload in port.
The 62,000-tonne Napoli was grounded on the World Heritage coastal site a week ago during a tow from mid-channel to Portland, Dorset, because of fears she would sink.
Its hull was damaged in a storm last Thursday, and her 26-member crew were rescued by helicopter after they abandoned ship.
Senior MCA coastguard Derek Smith warned that more containers could fall into the sea during the operation to unload the vessel. Around 100 have fallen off so far, some washing up onto a nearby beach where scavengers rifled through them earlier this week, taking everything from BMW motorbikes to nappies.
More than 1,000 of the estimated 3,500 tonnes of fuel oil being carried by the Napoli have been safely pumped into the tanker Fort Fisher, and the remainder could be cleared over the next few days, the MCA said.
A slick several kilometres long and 30 metres wide has now been successfully treated with dispersant.
