SMIT Salvage Refloats the Anchor Handler Skandi Amazonas Off Macae
Fuel went ashore before the patch and pull, and pumped water was handled to keep it out of the sea
The anchor handler Skandi Amazonas has been refloated off the coast of Macae in Brazil after being deliberately beached to keep her from sinking, in a salvage operation carried out by the Boskalis subsidiary SMIT Salvage.
The vessel struck a rock while entering the port of Macae, suffered water ingress through the resulting damage and was purposely put onto a sandbank near the beach. A salvage team was mobilised to assess the damage, develop a refloating plan, patch the hull, refloat the vessel and tow her back out to sea with the assistance of several tugs.
The location shaped the method. Given the sensitivity of the grounding site, the priority throughout was preventing pollution during both the grounding phase and the refloating itself. The fuel on board was transferred to tanks on the mainland before the pull, removing the largest single source of a spill from the equation. Particular care was taken with the water pumped out of the vessel, to keep it from being discharged into the sea. The Navy, environmental agencies and other competent authorities signed off on the salvage plan before work began.
After being refloated, the vessel was initially anchored at a sheltered anchorage off the Brazilian coast to confirm her stability and integrity, and was then towed to a nearby shipyard.
The sequence is textbook rather than dramatic, and that is the point. A vessel taking water after a rock strike has a narrow set of options, and beaching in a controlled way on a sandbank preserves the hull and the crew at the cost of a grounding that then has to be undone. The reverse operation is the difficult half: the hull has to be made watertight enough to float before any pull begins, the ground reaction has to be reduced by removing weight, and the timing has to fit a tide window that will not repeat for weeks if it is missed.
Removing bunkers first is what separates a salvage from an incident. An offshore vessel of this type carries substantial fuel for long station-keeping periods, and a hull that has already been holed once is not a reliable container for it during a refloating attempt in surf conditions near a beach.
