Costa Concordia sinks off the coast of Italy

Where have you been for the last century?

There is the little matter of self preservation. He had no more desire to perform a half-roll in deep water than his unknowing passengers.

According to the public statement the captain made last night, as I understand the interpritation, where the ship lays in not where it grounded. The captain claims to have hit an uncharted rock and then beached the ship to keep it from sinking in deep water.

I have taken a Costa cruise and it was a magnificent ship and I had a glorious time. Not quite the same as a private yacht, but it was a trip to Caribbean that was well worth it. Any boat is better than no boat - well, let me rethink that...

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115893768571611039178/albums/5697479271862536705

Judy

Best idea. Those ships have a stability computer on the bridge that is simply amazing. It is possible that such an event occurred as that sort of thing is a great risk to those who react to stability issues rather than analyze them.

My personal conjecture and guess and baseless assumption is that the submerged side of the vessel is in far worse condition.

Hi,

I am wondering how long it will take to remove the wreck?

The Dutch have a Diamond Saw that they have used with good results on the Submarine Kirsk and the Car Carrier Tricolor BBC NEWS | Europe | £30m cargo 'lost' as ship sinks albeit less that half the size of the Cruise Ship on the bottom.

A crew from Alang Alang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia would no doubt be able to knock off the bits above the waterline pretty quickly, the rest could then be sawn up and removed for recycling into Razor Blades.

Wouldn't you love to see the world's response to that scene?

Just imagine a bunch of half naked barefooted cutters scrambling around burned and smoking wreckage and pulling great chunks of scrap onto the island.

It would probably increase the tourism exponentially (if the wreck hasn't already) but can you imaginge the uproar from the environmental and worker safety crowd?

I have looked into the plotted course (AIS) and what can have happened.

The black line is true courses and the blue dotted is the missing plot.

I guess they performed a right turn along the red dotted line and when they realized they were about to hit the rocks, they made an emergency turn to the right, which made the aft part of the ship swinging onto the rock.

After that they continued up to the next confirmed plots and from there, either turned left (as my dots) or right, or just rotated on the spot trying to reach shallow waters...

A few passsing thoughts to ponder:

Off the coast of NZ during the past month, a Captain elected to take a shortcut over/through a charted reef. The container ship and cargo were lost.

The "uncharted" rock/reef the Concordia hit is named.

The Concordia was about 2 miles off its apparently normal route.

Passengers on news video said the Captain was seen in the bar with a beautiful lady on his arm prior to the sinking. Other passengers say the Captain was off the ship early

Carnival says the Captain is at fault, the Captain continues looking for his legal outs and is hoping for an equipment failure to lay his troubles on.

AIS track

Looking at the AIS track, if the turn they made when initially approaching the island was their standard rate turn, then they should have started turning away from the island well before the last plot in the track approaching the island. Your red dashed route seems about the same turn rate as that earlier turn, I bet it will be close to what is finally determined.

Interesting that there's a gap in the AIS data just when it gets interesting...

Here's a youtube replay of the AIS track: Costa Concordia accident - AIS replay - YouTube

Even better, here's a great article with a lot more depth on the AIS track. They make a significant point regarding squat and that the increased draft while underway at speed may have been the deciding factor...

SeaNews Turkey - Costa Concordia: A major navigational error, or what?

I'm told this is a webcam of the vessel. Being night, can't tell
http://www.giglionews.com/isoladelgiglio_porto.jpg
Pushing the refresh button seems to change to the latest jpg.
I sincerly hope this is NOT a false lead...Peter

Hi,

It looks like a single photo you have posted that shows the ship already laying on it's side.

This is the same camera I watched earlier today...

If this is true it looks really bad for the captain:

Cruise disaster: captain neared rocks in Facebook stunt for friend's family - Telegraph

And the bad news just in, is that 29 passengers and crew are still missing...

The investigation is not complete yet and since the ship grounded just after 0200 while the master was asleep, saying that he "elected" to take a shortcut is a dangerous and unfair conclusion to leap into.

The voyage plan may have called for something entirely different, his night orders or standing orders most likely did not include a shortcut over a reef (it is a safe bet they did not tell the mate to run aground) and the mate may have taken it entirely upon himself to order a turn for reasons yet to be determined, or there may have even been mechanical issues.

Until all the information is released and the experts have digested all of it, the cause of the Rena affair is a mystery.

This is about as bad as it gets. Transcript of the conversation between the Port Authority and the captain:
PA:"Captain, this is an order, now I am in charge. Get back on that ship and coordinate the operations. There are already casualties."

Schettino:"How many?"

PA:"You should tell me that! What do you want to do, go home? Now you get back on that ship and tell us what can be done, how many people are still there and what do they need."

Schettino:"OK, OK, I am going."

(The captain will not get back on the ship)
As for what he was doing there, apparently the captain steered close to the island so the head waiter could waive to his father. Acording to his father the head waiter called him before the grounding to tell him to expect them.
Overhead Bin - Captain's favor to head waiter to blame for cruise ship disaster?

Sounds to me like the captain will be doing some jail time. If the Italian courts charge with him with murder or manslaughter it could be quite a while.