The Golden Ray

New information about the MV* Golden Ray in an article in Popular Mechanics.

* #1, the MV stands for merchant Vessel.

They too report the cars on board are new Hyundai and Kia vehicles, though they do not say where they were manufactured. Officials at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery told me the Hyundia models did not come from their plant. Another source I've quoted says they were made in Mexico (and there is at least one huge Kia plant there) and were headed for the Middle-East.

The magazine also reports how little room for error there was when the ship capsized---as little as one foot in depth--- in maneuvering the 656-ft long car carrier through the waters off the Brunswick, Georgia coast!

"A sound is a narrow, inland-pointing arm of ocean often made by the ocean flooding a riverbed, like a delta without the mingling and silt. St. Simons Sound has an estimated maximum overall depth of 32 feet—think of this number like the minimum height for a highway, including low bridges—with a jagged, sharp, rocky bottom. The Golden Ray has a draft, or depth from waterline to keel bottom when the ship is fully loaded, of over 31 feet."

     Meanwhile, workers are constructing the barrier that will surround the ship and contain the debris--including broken up new cars!---when they slice the ship into seven pieces to transport them to a salvage yard. Seventy pilings are being driven into the seabed to contain the barrier surrounding the ship.

UPDATE: The latest story in The Brunswick News uses a much better phrase than the word "salvage" that I have written several times to describe the operation. Salvage means "to save", and there's no saving going on here. They write:

"a large-scale demolition process" 

Good decision!