The helicopter stalls for just a second —seemingly debating the prospects of lifting into the air — then with an unsettling surge of mechanical power, it is off the ground, leaving swirling dust and rippled water in its wake.

In seconds from the takeoff, the helicopter rises above the dunes and offers a spectacular view of the North Spit on a bright sunny day. From the sky above Empire, where Titan Maritime has the Karlissa B docked, its counterpart, the Karlissa A is a prominent fixture on the landscape, now out in the surf alongside the shipwrecked stern of the New Carissa.

As the pilot maneuvers closer, two crew members stare at the barge.

“Look how far it is out of the water,” one said.

Moving in close and fast, the pilot slows and settles the helicopter softly. Skillfully landed, it takes up only a fraction of the barge’s landing platform.     

“The New Carissa herself looks big, but when you put the Karlissa A out there, it puts it in perspective,” Titan Managing Director David Parrot (pronounced pear-O) said.

The barge towers above the water and the wreck. From this platform crews will be working 30 to 50 feet above the water, depending on the tides and ocean conditions.

It’s the only place with a view of the New Carissa from above.

The remains of the wreck — ladders to nowhere, empty doorways — give it the look of a ghost ship. It remains to be seen if Titan can push it into a true afterlife.

The stern is a case study in rust. Only a hint of black paint remains. There are the scars of failed attempts at removal in the form of dilapidated metal and wooden platforms. They have gone to the gulls.

The Karlissa A, in contrast, is bursting with life. Unexpected sunshine and calm seas Wednesday morning made the barge seem like a little island in the sun. The usual winds, typically blasting this time of year, were nothing more than a slight breeze.

But a day on the barge isn’t very peaceful.

The grind of the crane engine and whine of the helicopter as it geared up for take off sent the rhythmic sound of the ocean into background. Crashing waves had no impact on the barge. Parrot likes it that way. His crews can adjust barge height for the days when Mother Nature frowns on the South Coast. Those days the jacks can lift the barge another 30 feet in the air, saving the crew and equipment from battering salt water spray.

“What a day,” Parrot said repeatedly. He moved from place to place on the barge, quite a task as crews cleared the deck in preparation for storing chunks of metal from the wreck.

The energetic atmosphere was interrupted briefly by a cloud of smoke. Parrot rushed to the source.

False alarm.

A crew member  had fired up the barge’s incinerator.

Parrot’s crew turned its attention back to preparations. All matter of metal — staircases, cable car landing platforms and chains — made the deck more maze than work area. Before the week is out, the deck will be clear, Parrot said.

The landing platform was the first to go over the side — to be welded to the barge.

“We have limited space here,” Salvage Superintendent Dave Grecho said. “This is the first thing we are moving.”

The project timing has been imprecise, but if the crews’ workmanship in placing the cable car landing platform is any demonstration, the dismantling process will not be.

A crane did all the heavy lifting, but the crane operator, four crew members and Grecho had the task of making all the right moves. They had to guide the 10-ton piece of metal around one of the six barge legs and over the side. Workers tied ropes to the ends of the platform to swing and pull it around the  leg of the barge were the cable car will connect from the tower. Alternating between giving instructions over a radio and climbing up into the crane, Grecho, wearing jeans, a hard hat and a pink-and-white striped shirt, guided the slow lifting and turning process.

Parrot mostly watched, jumping in when workers needed a hand pulling the gigantic piece of metal into place.

It finally came in contact with the barge, with just two small taps. Arrows on the end of the barge and the platform were perfectly lined up.

“Nice job,” Parrot said to his crew.

By Sunday, he hopes the landing platform no longer will be a storage deck, but that it will be ready for workers to start using the cable car to move from beach to barge and back. For now, crews are using a helicopter to get on and off the barge.

The weather was so good, crews contemplated taking the second barge to its station west of the wreck.

“It would mean the next few days would be absolute chaos,” he said.

In the end, the crew opted to focus on clearing the chaos on the barge already positioned in the water.

Soon, the helicopter comes back to life.

It takes longer for the helicopter to warm up than it does to cruise the 1,000 feet to the beach. The barge shrinks as the helicopter gains height, but never looks small.

In a hurricane of sand, the helicopter lands in the much tighter confines on the staging site. The propellers seem dangerously close to a storage container converted into a temporary office.  Looking out the window of the office, which provides a perfect frame of the wreck site, Parrot marvels at the beautiful day and the view of onlookers on horseback crossing the beach between the dunes and the wreck site.

 “It’s quite a sight,” he said. “There’s not too many places in the world you could see that.”