Port Royal Pulled Free

USS Port Royal (CG 73) has been pulled off the sand. Nice bit of reporting at Navy Times by Phillip Ewing, giving us some of the information I know people here are interested in.

He said the Navy knows the ship’s rubber sonar dome was damaged in the grounding, but he didn’t know how badly, nor how many other problems the grounding may have caused. A lighter barge brought alongside over the weekend was also slammed by waves against the Port Royal’s side, although it wasn’t clear whether that damage was serious.

To lighten the ship enough to pull it off the rocks, engineers emptied the cruiser’s tanks of seawater pumped in to compensate for the fuel oil burned by its engines. The ship also jettisoned its anchors and anchor chains, and offloaded more than 100 crew members, Gureck said. Then the Military Sealift Command salvage ship Salvor, the powerful tug Dove — which is used to tow the Sea-Based X-Band radar — and seven other Navy and civilian tugs worked at high tide for 40 minutes early Monday to pull the Port Royal off the rocks.

The article goes on to mention Rear Adm. Dixon Smith apparently went on the ship on Friday, after the grounding, to take charge of the salvage operations.

The ship had to remove 600 tons of stuff to be pulled free, and will be put into dry dock next week after a damage assessment.

Good job to those who pulled the ship loose. Most importantly, no injuries.