Cruise Ships Love'um or Hate'um

 


 

This is just one reason why I will never go on a cruise ship.  Obviously I am not a big fan of cruising anyway.  First of all I get really seasick and second of all I hate not seeing land when I am on the water.  But this mess with the Concordia happened within site of land.  There are stories that the Captain was otherwise engaged at the time and is now on trail for Manslaughter for the 32 poor people that perished in this tragedy. Perhaps the fact that this happened so close to land means that there were fewer fatalities.

 

Even though I don't like cruise ships, I am totally fascinated by this operation.  Salvage teams have been working on a plan to hoist this 114,000 ton ship up and they are trying to get it done this month before winter storms reek havoc on this unstable monstrosity. If they don't do it just right it can fall apart as they rotate it.  The odds were that there was a 70 percent success rate for this mission and it has cost 800 million dollars.  This leads me to ask one question, Why don't they just break it in pieces and take each piece out of the water?  I am sure there is a good reason that I would love to hear.  But they did manage to raise it in one piece.

On the plus side for the last nineteen months give or take some the island of Giglio has had a boost in its economy selling goods and services to the many salvage operations crews.

I hope they film it because I want to watch! I also would be interested in hearing what caused the ship to list over the way it did. No matter what happens I will not be taking a cruise in the near future or ever for that matter.

About the Salvage operation scheduled to start Monday September 16th.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/14/222515673/costa-concordia-salvage-operation-to-begin-monday