A heavy swell of about 4m, predicted for Saturday as well, hampered salvage efforts on Friday to start a ship-to-ship oil transfer off the coast of Cape Town.
”We are waiting for the swell conditions to abate,” said Smit Salvage spokesperson Clare Gomes.
Earlier the day, salvage personnel began transferring approximately 30 tons of equipment to the stricken bulk carrier Cape Africa and prepared for the oil transfer to start during the daylight hours of Friday or Saturday.
The condition of the Cape Africa, with a cargo of iron ore, is described as stable.
As a precautionary measure the ship remains at least 120 nautical miles off Cape Town until about 1 900 tons of bunker fuel has been transferred.
The vessel, which is carrying a cargo of just less than 150 000 tons of iron ore, has a tear 23m long and between five and seven metres high in her hull — a space big enough to drive a fleet of buses through seven abreast.
The cause of the tear, first noticed by the ship’s crew last week, is not known.
A big fear is that some of the Cape Africa’s bulkheads — the upright partitions between each of her nine holds — will collapse.
”If the bulkheads collapse, she’ll go down quickly; should she go down, she’ll break up dramatically, and oil will come up,” Smit Salvage head Dave Main said earlier this week.
The currents would move any oil from such a disaster in a north-westerly direction, and the slick should prove ”no risk to the Cape coast”. — Sapa