" Costamare Shipping Company SA managing director Diamantis Manos today issued an apology via video in which he apologised and vowed to co-operate with the investigation.
"To the people of Tauranga, we want to say that we are deeply sorry for the situation that has arisen and the threat you are now facing from fuel oil from the vessel washing up on the beaches in your beautiful part of the world,'' he said.
"It is our ship that went aground and we apologise without hesitation for what has happened.''
The company had sent experts from around the world to help deal with the situation and they were working closely with Maritime New Zealand and other agencies, as well as salvers, to try to stabilise the ship and mitigate its effects. "
That is the right thing for him to and I see that the company will co-operate with the TAIC
" It would co-operate with the Transport Accident Investigation Commission's investigation and had invited it to visit its offices so it could see the safety management system employed on the Rena. "
I know a little about these investigations and I can assure you a lot of very clever seafares will be talking amongst each other preparing some very interesting questions.
I see over at Kiwiblog Maritime New Zealand is getting a lot of flack the truth is most of this is not fair what should be getting flack is the process in my opinion. When an incident like this happens the first thing that needs to happen is a salver is appointed this happened fairly fast and the salver is responsible to trhe owners not the New Zealand government by declaring MV Rena and I haven't got my terminology right but effectively a dangerous ship MNZ have the ability to order the salver to do something or veto an action they propose, that was actually smart. In my opinion the salver should despite being employed and payed by the owners should be responsible to the government.
The volunteering seems to be a total cock up and as far as I know this is being managed by MNZ I think this is wrong I would have left it to an other agency probably the regional council, MNZ have enough to do dealing with the oil, ship and containers at sea. Ringing back people who have left their contact details on a 0800 number is a distraction, as can be seen on tonight's TVNZ News with a woman saying she hasn't heard back from them despite calling last Friday.
" Maritime New Zealand salvage manager Bruce Anderson confirmed this afternoon that salvage teams had been on the craft for four hours today, and had just arranged an extra hour after concluding it was safe to operate on.
Mr Anderson said the vessel was holding together and water was pushing it further onto the reef, with the entire front section now flooded.
While they have managed to board the ship, transport minister Steven Joyce said it may be too dangerous to work inside the hull of the craft.
"I have to take my hat off to these guys. They're working in a challenging, and can I say dangerous, environment."Now this actually good news I haven't had a chance to discuss it yet but there is a real possibility that when the ship breaks up they will be able to float the stern I gather and get it to land that would make the oil extraction easy and the hull could be cleaned and then sunk creating a new reef. The bulkheads will be the key to this and the salvage team will be able to determine there condition. I could of course be wrong and it might turn on its tits and sink.
OK I have had a look at the marine forecasts and things look a lot better for the Plenty area for the next few days the tugs that are holding the stern on the reef might want to think about towing it ashore, the salvage team might want to be making sure the stern will float and the Navy might want to think about the explosives they need to complete what the sea has started.
The Greens I note have attacked the idea of off shore oil drilling and I also note Phil Goff has said it is a bad idea. I disagree but we need to have proper risk assessment and then meet that with assets. The truth is that MNZ as I pointed out in this blog when I had a crack at No Right Turn did not expect a 46 000 tonne container ship to drive its self onto a charted reef at 17 knots ( 32 Kph ).
I guess you could argue that we need to put warning lights on reefs, Astrolabe will currently be returning a radar return that makes it unnecessary.
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