Under the eyes of several spectactors, the "Seatrout" was refloated on Sep 20 at 4 p.m. Involved werre the tugs "Multratug 14", "Multratug 27", "Multratug 22", "Multratug 30", "Union Pearl" and "Experience" which had started the salvage attempt at 3 p.m. The accident which caused the grounding had involved three ships, two ships which came from Antwerp and one that was bound to Antwerp. Due to the resilient ship, the "Usolie" and the "Seatrout" had to divert so close to each other that there was a suction effect, a collision followed and the "Seatrout" eventually stranded at the Dumoulin Road near the village of Bath. During the salvage operation, ship traffic was completely shut down. Previously, ships of less than 200 meters could still pass with caution. Dutch report with photo: www.hvzeeland.nl/... www.gva.be/cnt/dm...

Immediately after the "Lucky Seven"’s towing operation resumed in the morning of Sep 10, amidst heavy rainfall, the engine of the "Maria", one of the three tugs failed because of the choking of the oil filter, and its towing wire snapped forcing the salvors to abort the operation until the next high tide. The previous day the vessel had moved about 300 meters away from the beach and had hit the sand bar due to the low tide leading to postponing the towing exercise. When the salvors resumed the operation on Sep 19 at around 10.15 a.m. the vessel’s position shifted, but the engine failure of the "Maria" forced a halt to the operation. The casino ship drifted back around 10 to 15 metres and was now resting on the sand bank. It remained tied to the remaining two tugs, one of which belongs to the Captain of Ports Department. Once the weather has subsided and the engine of the tug has been repaired, the towing operation was to resume on Sep 20. The high tide was expected at around 10:45 a.m.

Nustar Energy’s oil terminal in the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius suffered damage to several tanks and other equipment due to Hurricane Irma, but all the U.S. firm’s employees are safe and no oil spills were registered, it said in a statement. NuStar’s Statia terminal has the capacity to store 13.03 million barrels of crude and products. The company also said that no restart date has yet been set, and that it will be working on Thursday to restore power at the facility. “Despite the damage and major clean-up effort, we feel like we fared very well considering the significant power of this storm,” it said. Source: Reuters

(Reuters) – Monster Hurricane Irma hammered the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Wednesday as it packed a potentially catastrophic mix of pounding winds and rain and surging surf that was expected to make landfall in Florida over the weekend. Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland in as many weeks, but its precise trajectory remained uncertain. Hurricane Harvey killed more than 60 people and caused as much as $180 billion in damage after hitting Texas late last month. The eye of Irma, a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 miles per hour (295 km per hour), was bearing down on the Virgin Islands after passing over the half-French, half-Dutch island of St. Martin, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said. Category 5 is its highest category. Its trajectory indicated Irma, which the NHC said was the strongest Atlantic storm on record, would skirt most of the Caribbean as it moves west-northwest. Karel van Oosterom, the Netherlands ambassador to the United Nations, said Irma hit the Dutch islands of Saba and Sint Eustasius before overrunning St. Martin. gcaptain.com/hurr... https://youtu.be/dA5qYrboTUE