VIDEO: Golden Ray cutting now underway
Written by Nick Blenkey
Anchor chain attached to the pulley system on the VB-10000 heavy-lift vessel moves slowly to cut through Section One of the Golden Ray wreck. [St. Simons Sound Incident Response photo]
After waiting for weather windows and overcoming a number of technical difficulties, the Unified Command (USCG, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Gallagher Marine Systems) working on the salvage of the capsized car carrier Golden Ray reports that cutting of the wreck into sections has now begun.
Photos and B-roll video released today, show the largest heavy lift vessel ever built in the U.S., the twin-gantry, twin-barge catamaran VB-10,000 starting the cutting process.
The first cut comes more than a year after the September 8, 2019 capsize of the 660 foot long vessel.
A lot of the preparatory work that has preceded the start of the cutting operation has gone into constructing a sophisticated environmental protection barrier around the wreck and setting up spill response resources — ready for whatever happens when debris from the remains of the vehicles aboard the vessel when it capsized spills out into the waters.
