The ambitious international project to remove the crashed Costa Concordia cruise ship from the Italian island of Giglio has seen a major development recently: after many months of work, the hulking wreck has finally been floated.
This has been some time coming and even though there is still a lot of legal and physical work to be done to bring this case to a close, the salvage process is seeing much-needed progress. When an operation of this magnitude is begun, all of the vessels involved need the appropriate commercial watercraft insurance to guarantee that they are prepared for the difficult work ahead of them.
According to CNN, the ship was lifted Monday and now is slowly being moved toward its eventual resting place in Genoa. A video from that source also showed the CEO of Costa Cruises, Michael Thamm, commenting on the next steps.
"The ship is on even keel, the ship is floating again, and all technical systems are working very well," he said. "I think we've seen a great start of this refloating operation, and let's move forward."
So where now? Even though the end is in sight, lots of preparations need to be made: divers have been deployed to search for lost former occupants of the vessel, the 30 "sponsons" necessary to keep the boat afloat need to be affixed, and lest we forget, the captain who may have been responsible for the crash, Francesco Schettino, is still arguing his case in court.
But even a case as demanding as this can be more manageable if the necessary insurance considerations have already been made. This can include diving insurance and the coverage to account for any related maneuvers.