Saturday, Aug. 16, 6 a.m., Jolene Guzman, Staff Writer

The New Carissa hid behind thick fog for most of last week. But like the wizard behind the curtain, Titan Salvage still is moving the wreck, even if it can’t be seen from shore.

But the work has an added danger. Waves are bigger these days. They’re crashing over the New Carissa and spraying the decks of the jack-up barges.

On Wednesday, the only indication that anything was happening was the crack of the chains and the disembodied voices carrying over the radio. By Thursday, it was more of the same. Then Friday, while Titan’s crew toiled in the surf, an oil spill response team picked up pieces of tar released from the wreck.

If you sit long with Titan Managing Director David Parrot you can get a little antsy. He's impatient sitting on shore waiting for word — any word. When the radio sparks to life after long pauses, he jumps up to tell Salvage Master Shelby Harris not to keep him in the dark for so long.

“Silence for that long is unacceptable,” Parrot said firmly, but good-naturedly.

What Parrot wanted to know was that the Titan pullers and crane applied about 2,000 tons of force. The ship stern moved up this week — about 30 inches and rotated about 2 degrees.

Crewmen set to the wreck early Thursday with two goals: to remove a generator and drain parts of the wreck filling with water.

“They’re like mountain goats,” Parrot said Thursday, watching his guys carefully from the Karlissa B.

Occasionally waves would hit the propeller, now out of the water, just right to send saltwater flying feet into the air. Workers burned away, seemingly oblivious to the swirling soup around them.

The weather may be bad for those who work on the wreck, but good for pulling on it. The big swells and wind can really help with the tugging.

“The waves knock it around quite dramatically,” Harris said. “That helps.”

And, the torching crew is looking forward to minus tides today and Sunday so they can get in there and do more cutting.

Thursday, Aug. 14, 10:30 a.m., Susan Chambers, Staff Writer

It seemed the day was going to stay beautiful on Wednesday. The Karlissa A and B barges — and what little remains above the water of the New Carissa — appeared out of the fog in the morning but just as rapidly disappeared by early afternoon. The wind came up and brought with it sea-level clouds.

Not just any fog. Thick fog. Even from shore nearby, you couldn’t see Big Red. The cables for the trolley disappeared into nowhere. But the work didn’t stop. Neither did the creativity necessary for adapting to changing salvage conditions.

Titan Salvage crews tugged on the wreck. The only evidence of progress was the chatter over the VHF radios and the intense clunking and clanging of the chains as they strained.

On shore, Titan’s Mike Pacheco and MAD Industries Inc.’s David Blondell, who keep the cable car running and ferry supplies to and from the barges, were bored. The shoreside freight container that serves as a fabrication shop, supply store and break room was a welcome respite from the northwest wind.

The guys tried sending pictures to each others’ cell phones via bluetooth technology. It didn’t work.

They talked about the boat races this weekend in Lakeside.

Then the conversation turned to the weather, the last resort in a stagnant conversation. (Yes, it’s colder in the winter in Cape Cod, Massachusetts — where Pacheco lives. It’s hotter there in the summertime, too.)

Soon, Titan Managing Director David Parrot strolled up to say hello. He’d been listening to progress on the radio, anxiously awaiting an update of whether the Carissa moved. Typical radio conversation crackled:

“Wire up.”

“Wire down.”

“Two-hundred tons on the tugger.”

“Hey Shelby.”

“Ease off. OK.”

“I’ve got 200 tons.”

“All stop.”

Leave it to David to interpret a couple hours’ worth of radio conversation — and radio silence.

Somewhere in the fog, Titan Salvage Master Shelby Harris was indeed rocking the wreck back and forth, bow to stern. During some of that time, the crew also was airlifting — shooting pressurized air into the sand around the hull to move it away from the wreck. All that meant that the port side now is higher out of the surf and most of the five-bladed propeller is visible. Of course, nobody could see it from shore.

Tuesday, Aug. 12, 5:11 p.m., Lou Sennick, Senior Photographer

When Randy Henry first arrived on the North Spit in February 1999, the New Carissa had been grounded for less than two days. But already, he said, the wood chip ship was developing cracks in the hull.

Tuesday afternoon Henry talked with me about the New Carissa. We had some memories in common.

Two days after grounding was the first time I had seen the New Carissa on the beach being pounded by the surf.

Now that Titan Salvage is removing the last part of the stern section nine years later, the wreck of the New Carissa is coming full circle for both Henry and myself.

Henry works for NRC Environmental Services with a local office in Portland, though he is from Texas. When the ship grounded in 1999, he arrived on the North Spit about 36 hours later. It was starting to develop cracks and was about to start leaking heavy bunker oil into the surf.

NRC is a company that responds to spills both at seas and other industries. Henry said he cannot remember all the spills and shipwrecks he has worked on, but the list would be long. But he remembers this one.

He remembers the incident command post first set up at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station North Bend that week. It was packed with people all with different jobs. Then they moved the command post about a week later to larger quarters in the National Guard Armory.

One of the first things he remembers was being handed a stack of messages about birds found here, an animal there. He was not sure what was going on, since his job was to clean up oil from the beach, not critters.

It turned out that a biologist with the state of Oregon had the same name. They met and swapped messages and he moved on to his real job.

He spent about a year monitoring the wrecked ship on the North Spit before moving on to other incidents.

Now, nine years later, he has returned to the North Spit to monitor the beach and nearby waters as Titan cuts away the remains of the stern section.

About every hour, he leaves his small office trailer on the sand road and walks the beach looking for anything that might be hazardous. So far, he said he only found bits and pieces of absorbent rags and insulation off the ship, nothing hazardous.

He did find a Japanese glass float one morning. On another, he picked up an old Mason jar with a zinc lid. He said they were made in the 1930s and early 1940s.

On some days, the monitoring is like watching paint dry, but Henry has never been bored. When he is not walking on the beach looking for hazards, he has other work to do for NRC on his computer and watch as large chunks of steel are cut away from the stern.

When the work is done in a few weeks, the New Carissa will be gone and Henry’s work will come full circle — nine years later.



Monday, Aug. 11, 2008, 2 p.m., By Susan Chambers

The Titan Salvage crew is at it again -- tugging on the wreck.

It ain’t movin’. Salvors plan to again start blasting sand away from the shipwreck to help urge the ship off its sandy foundation off Coos Bay's North Spit. A low-pressure system moving in later this week may bring some bigger surf with it that may help rock the boat.

Torch-wielding cutters hacked away at it over the weekend and cut just about as much off as they could, while still leaving some above water to latch onto so they could pull again.

And no matter how many times you see a big chunk of the wreck disappear, hauled away by the crane, Big Red, it’s still fascinating to watch.

On Friday, Titan Managing Director David Parrot was on the beach watching as the part of the stern section that held the rudder post was hauled off. He was on the phone talking with Salvage Master Shelby Harris — and both were guessing how much the section weighed.

The crane has a gauge on it that can measure the weight of what’s on the hook. Soon, the answer came back: 65 tons. It was the biggest chunk to come off the wreck so far, but still a lot lighter than the engine that’s still sand-locked.

On Sunday, another 37.5-ton piece was hauled away and stored on the Karlissa B barge. Families were on the beach, many folks were taking pictures. It was a gorgeous day — some guessed around 80 degrees with no wind, but the reality was closer to 68 degrees — and a good one for visiting the wreck before it’s gone.

Friday, Aug. 8, 2008, 11:30 a.m., By Susan Chambers

What a day – overcast but not too cold. Thursday was a nice day for getting new shots of the Titan Salvage crews at work.

The guys were busy. After a couple days of jetting sand, then pulling and tugging, then jetting some more, wreck of the New Carissa began to rise.

All that meant a little bit of chaos on the barges Thursday. Or, in Titan Managing Director David Parrot's words in an e-mail: “Today will be somewhat chaotic as we have just finished a very technical operation so we have to re-organize the barges, level out (Karlissa) A, and urgently take fuel, as the air lifting operation required the continuous running of the main compressors and burned up massive amounts of it.”

At the same time, cutters took torch to ship and sliced off more huge chunks of steel. Benny Hempstead Excavating brought out a tank full of fuel early Thursday. Fuel had to be siphoned from that tank, into a smaller one, then taken out by the cable car to the wreck and transferred to the tanks on both barges. Just that one process – and three trips back and forth to the barges – took all day.

That done, the cable car drivers may have an easier day today. One of the drivers, Titan crewman Ray Underwood, flies out today to go home and Mike Pacheco, who took a couple weeks off, returns to the site today.

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008, 12:30 p.m., By Elise Hamner and Jolene Guzman

Most people around here remember when the New Carissa went aground near Horsfall Beach. It was the morning after one of those big, nasty winter storms. It was deadline that morning, Feb. 4, 1999. A reader called into the newsroom. He said something was going on at the North Spit.

“Look out there,” he said.

A wood chip ship was just sitting on the beach. That began the saga of the New Carissa.

As you know, Florida-based Titan Salvage is ending the saga. The state of Oregon hired Titan to cut up and haul out the shipwreck.

In early June, Titan moved in two jack-up barges on either side of the New Carissa and plunged the barge legs — six on each barge — 30 feet into the sand to provide stable platforms for their work.

Salvors then turned their metal-cutting torches on the wreck. Late last month, they shifted gears and started using Titan’s monstrous pullers to break the New Carissa free of the sand.

Some readers just can’t read or peruse enough photos about the demise of the New Carissa. Some of you keep asking for more, so here it is.