It is really vital to have a well thought-out and
organized refloating plan in order to apply a certain
refloating operation.
In order to have such a refloating plan it is
necessary to investigate properly the ship’s site and
gather the appropriate information.
To develop a workable refloating plan, the position
and condition of the ship must be evaluated, understand
the complexities of the given situation and conceptualize
the work and methods necessary to accomplish the aims
of the operation.
Planning must proceed from broadly based tactics
covering entire operations to detailed plans for specific
ships or other portions of an operation.
In all cases, the plan must serve the purpose of the
operation; then balance the work to be done with the
resources available and the schedule required.
Ships’ groundings can have devastating effects on
the marine environment.
Cleaning up after a major grounding event could
lead to enormous amounts of money and even then there
is no certainty that the cleaning process has the best
results or even the wanted results.
The society needed such events to truly admit that
there is an increased need for safer ships and also for
new requirements in ships’ construction so that this kind
of unfortunate events would not be met again in the
future in the maritime business.
It is not a good thing that these requirements are
triggered only when there is an appropriate media
attention given to these events.
This kind of requirements should first of all come
from the shipbuilders and afterwards from the shipowners
but due to the high costs involved that arise from
these safety measurements it can be easily understood
that it is not in their interest to raise the expenses in the
process of building a ship.
Also, when talking about refloating a grounded
ship, it is first of all necessary to fully understand the
event that lead the ship into that position so that the best
method for refloating is applied. It is an important
demand to establish the appropriate method of refloating
so that the risk of pollution is reduced to minimum.