UMM AL QUWAIN // The White Whale supply ship that sank in Umm Al Quwain waters eight months ago has finally been salvaged, engineers said last night.
Dubai Ship Building, the company contracted by the Ministry of Environment and Water to bring the ship out, said the salvage work lasted for about eight days.
Earlier attempts had been hindered by weather, the company said.
The engineers tied the ship with ropes and wires, balanced it on the water and finally hauled it out using a larger ship called the Amlak, said Badr bin Mubarak, the managing director of Dubai Ship Building.
"There was some small diesel leakage as the ship came out of water but we managed to control it and everything is now safe and fine," Mr bin Mubarak said.
On Sunday the ship was hauled up five metres from the surface, but a wire snapped and it sank back into the water, he said.
The team had to start the salvaging work over again.
"Our biggest challenge was balancing the ship so it did not break into two parts," Mr bin Mubarak said.
He said the ship, which is owned by Arabian Coast Cargo Services of Ajman, was still at the site last night but was to be carried to one of the country's ports where it will be safely unloaded by the Ministry of Environment and Water.
Mr bin Mubarak said the ship came out of water carrying a total of 450 tonnes of diesel.
It was carrying several hundred tonnes of diesel when it sank 16 kilometres off the Umm Al Quwain coast on October 22.
The ministry did not issue a statement last night.
The minister, Dr Rashid bin Fahad, said this week the salvation work had resumed on Wednesday and the ship was expected to be out of water on Sunday.
"A team of the ministry's marine research center is stationed there to ensure a clean recovery operation without any oil spills," Mr bin Fahad said.
Last week, Hamad bin Mubarak, head of the salvage project, said every effort had been made to ensure the ship's salvaging worked this time.
"We are almost through with tying the wires beneath the ship and just need a good positioning to balance the ship before it is pulled out," Hamad bin Mubarak said.
He and his colleagues are working out of prefabricated offices on a barge next to the salvage rig, where they monitor the progress of divers through video and audio feeds.
Once work to balance the wreck has been completed the ship will be raised.
It was lying about 30 metres below the surface, 11 nautical miles off the coast of UAQ, about 30 minutes by boat.
Divers have on several occasions worked to stop the fuel leaks from the ship.
A number of ships have recently sunk in waters off the Northern Emirates because of bad weather.
In January, the Lady Moon, a 25-metre ship, sank 500 metres off the coast of Hamriya in Sharjah.
She had a storage capacity of between 200 and 250 tonnes of fuel. The ship's five Indian crew members were rescued uninjured.
In February last year two other cargo ships, the Dolphin and Lady Rana, ran aground on Sharjah Beach after technical problems caused by rough weather at sea.
A police spokesman said at the time that the captains of both ships had lost control after the vessels were battered by three-metre waves.
ykakande@thenational.ae
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
MATCH INFO
World Cup 2022 qualifier
UAE v Indonesia, Thursday, 8pm
Venue: Al Maktoum Stadium, Dubai
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How to get exposure to gold
Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.
A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.
Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.
Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.
London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long
However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.
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Number of employees: 90
Sector: Online gaming industry
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