Browsing: Running Aground

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Ever Forward Floating Again in Chesapeake

More than 35 days after it ran aground outside a shipping channel in the Chesapeake, the 1,095-foot container ship Ever Forward is free – floating on its own bottom once again. The ship was freed by five tugs and two pulling barges, jockeying the huge vessel backward and side to side until it refloated Sunday morning on a high tide and full moon. The ship ran aground outside the Craighill Channel after it left Baltimore, heading for Norfolk, Virginia. It draws 42 feet and it was stuck in 24 feet of water. After the ship floated again, tugs pulled it…

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Next Step: Remove Containers from Stuck Ship

The 1,095-foot container ship Ever Forward is still stuck in the Chesapeake, and the Coast Guard just announced that salvors will have to unload some cargo containers in an effort to refloat it. Two separate attempts to move the ship by a series of pull barges and tugboats, plus continuing dredging, have all failed. The ship, which draws more than 42 feet, is hard aground in 24 feet of water. The Ever Forward ran aground on Sunday, March 13, after leaving Baltimore, heading for Norfolk, Virginia, with a pilot on board. AIS data indicate it was running about 13 knots…

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Tugs Try, Fail, To Budge Grounded Container Ship

The 1,095-foot-long Ever Forward container ship, which draws more than 42 feet, is still hard aground in the Chesapeake in 24 feet of water despite the efforts of five tugs earlier this week to refloat it. The Ever Forward ran aground on March 13 after it left the Port of Baltimore with a pilot on board. AIS data says the ship was running at 13 knots when it left the dredged Craighill shipping channel and stopped suddenly outside the Patapsco River. The Coast Guard has not yet determined what caused  the ship to leave the channel. In an effort to…

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Ships Run Aground in Chesapeake, Caribbean

In the past few days, a 1,050-foot container ship ran aground in the Chesapeake after leaving the Port of Baltimore, and a 1,070-foot cruise liner with 3,000 passengers ran aground after leaving Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. There were no reports of injuries in either grounding. In the Chesapeake, the container ship Ever Forward ran aground near Craighill Channel outside the Patapsco River. The ship, holding 11,850 20-foot containers, draws 42.6 feet; it was sitting in 24 feet of water. The Coast Guard and the state’s Department of the Environment were trying to coordinate efforts to refloat it. Local…

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Grounded Ocracoke Inlet Yacht Inching to Water

More than two weeks after it ran aground on the beach in Ocracoke, North Carolina, Scott Pumphrey’s 55-foot motoryacht is inching closer to getting back in the water again. The yacht, a 2001 Novatek named Vivens Aqua, is being pulled along the beach by an excavator while it sits on four giant pneumatic pins that roll it forward, slowly, very slowly. The 55,000-pound boat rolls on three pins at a time while the rear one is removed, deflated, moved to the front and inflated again. This takes a while. But the boat only has another 500 feet or so before…

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55-Foot Yacht Stuck on North Carolina Beach

A 55-foot Novatec flybridge motoryacht has been stuck on a North Carolina beach for more than a week after it ran aground about 1 a.m. on January 25. The Coast Guard, TowBoatUS, and the owner have been trying to get it floating again ever since. The boat is named Vivens Aqua and it ran aground after the owner, Scott Pumphrey, from Salisbury, Maryland, said it suffered steering failure. It ended up on the beach at Cape Hatteras National Seashore near the south end of Ocracoke Island. Pumphrey was trying to get through Ocracoke Inlet, notorious for its shifting sand, and…

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Five-Deck Riverboat Hits Sandbar, Gets Stuck

This happens to the best of us, but most of us don’t run aground while at the helm of a brand-new, five-deck, 269-foot riverboat with 174 people on board. But the American Cruise Line riverboat named American Jazz did run aground last week after it strayed from the channel and got stuck on a sandbar in Lake Barkley on the Cumberland River near Canton, Kentucky. The ship was near mile marker 62 on the river. The Coast Guard received a call of the grounding from the company and sent a 29-foot shallow-water response boat from Paducah with a marine investigator.…

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See the Video of an Oil Tanker Running Aground off Southport, North Carolina

I think it’s safe to say that most of us (all of us?) who’ve cruised on the ICW have run aground at some point. Running aground in a recreational boat is one thing. Running aground in an oil tanker is another. This video, taken from a backyard home security camera in Southport, North Carolina, shows the MT Swan Biscay, flagged in the Marshall Islands, running aground on the Cape Fear River. Not only does the ship hit the bottom, but it also keeps going, spinning around, throwing considerable fear into the captain of the small fishing boat who scrambles to…