10:55 a.m., Friday, Sept. 18, 2008, by Staff Writer Susan Chambers

Visitors to the Karlissa A and B barges come in many forms.

There are some who have a background in the marine industry. Some don’t. Most all bring cameras of some sort and most all are in awe of the New Carissa — or lack of the New Carissa — and the work Titan Salvage crews are doing.

But for one visitor on Saturday, the draw wasn’t anything in particular. Maybe just a warm spot in the sun to rest.

A young pelagic cormorant flew on to the stern of the Karlissa B, right in front of the lunch room. It was as if it wanted to watch the progress of the torch crew down on wreck, the same as the rest of us. Or, maybe it wanted lunch.

“Look, it’s our new mascot,” Mike Pacheco said.

It wasn’t long ago that Titan had seven mascots: Two pair of nesting gulls transferred from the helicopter pad on the New Carissa wreck. One nest produced two baby gulls, the other nest only one. Now the youngsters and parents — and the nests — are gone.

Pacheco ducked into the lunchroom and grabbed a cracker. He tried to entice the bird into taking a bite, but the cormorant just stared at him with eyes as black as its feathers.

“What’s that you got up there, a duck?” Salvage Superintendent Dave Grecho radioed from the wreck.

Pacheco gave up on the cracker. Blondell tried, but the cormorant wanted nothing to do with Blondell’s offer.

“That’s not fish,” Pacheco said.

“You’re not feeding him any of Blair’s (Bigelow) ravioli, I hope,” someone said over the radio.

The bird climbed on a fire hose, then snapped at Dave Blondell, even though it seemed to enjoy the gentle brushing Blondell gave it with his leather-gloved hand. The bird eventually got tangled up in a wire cable stretched between stanchions, got itself untangled, then wandered out to the edge of the barge.

Soon, the latest Titan mascot spread its wings and left.

As of the end of the day Wednesday, Titan crews had completely removed the rest of the engine crankshaft, the last of three generators and one big piece of a side shell of the New Carissa.

One other piece of side shell has kind of peeled off the wreck and lodged in the sand — a piece that crews tried on Wednesday to chain-cut using the pullers and anchor chains, Titan Director of Engineering Phil Reed said.

---

6 p.m., Friday, Sept. 12, 2008, by Staff Writer Jolene Guzman

It’s getting desperate. The weather and New Carissa have proven challenging to the Titan Salvage crew. Titan has resorted to bringing a gun to the New Carissa work site.

Actually, it was a World War II rifle and bringing it aboard the barge offered the crew a chance to take a break from the grueling work and have some fun. They took a group photo Wednesday after work.

Yes, the rifle was unloaded.

Crewmen on the barges passed the gun around, inspecting it, trying to figure out how it works.

It’s an intimidating piece of wood and metal with a long bayonet on the end. It’s heavy. And huge. Probably almost as tall as I am. I’m not a gun person so seeing me handle it must have been a sight. Me 5-feet, 4-inches tall holding a 5-foot long rifle like an alien object.

The rifle was impressive but not as much as the position of the beast in the surf Wednesday. Salvage Master Shelby Harris and crew had the front end of the wreck lifted far out of the water. Salvors were climbing around the front, setting torches to steel and working far above the furious surf washing in.

It was the end of the day. That was a good thing because the weather was getting worse by the minute. Salt water was blowing all around. Crewmen on deck hovered in sheltered corners waiting for the crew to come off the wreck for the photo.

Managing Director David Parrot told his crew not to clean up for the picture. He wanted them proudly smudged. The 170-ton piece of engine pulled off the New Carissa last Saturday served as background — the shipwreck hunters’ trophy.

“Have you seen the engine?” he asked me.

I hadn’t, so I followed him around to the back of the Karlissa B. Yet another intimidating piece of steel.

Once the crew gathered around in front of the gargantuan engine piece, Harris took the musket in hand. National Response Corporation Environmental Services coordinator Randy Henry gave Harris headgear more fitting for the occasion: a white cowboy hat. At one point, Harris put the butt of the musket on the deck of the barge, his foot up on a block of wood and curled his lip for a photo.

Now that’s how you handle a rifle.

---

Tuesday, Sept. 8, 11:38 a..m., by Susan Chambers, Staff Writer

For once, it was nice. Relatively speaking.

Monday at the New Carissa was free of fog. A north wind blew, but not too bad, and Titan Salvage crews working on the wreck got wet only a little bit.

Well, except for Salvage Superintendent Dave Grecho. He got soaked.

A couple teams of four guys made trips to the wreck to cut away holding pins, braces, caps, etc., so the 100-ton crankshaft could be lifted away.

But like the rest of the wreck, the crankshaft was being stubborn and cranky. It wasn’t yielding to torches, prying, cables, cranes or cussing.

Salvors worked on it all day Tuesday while a National Geographic team of three men filmed them cutting away metal. Visitors to the North Spit took pictures from the beach on one of the first days it was clear enough to see the barges from shore.

Three times, salvors visited the wreck with torches, sledgehammers and pry bars.

Eric “Rabbit” Hickey and Yuri “Tarantula” Mayani got hit by waves a couple times as they worked on the far end of the stern, the west end, in the deeper part of the ocean.

It wasn’t until later that Grecho had his turn.

Torch in hand, he was burning through metal like a knife through cheese - slowly, but surely. I don’t know if he saw the wave curling up and over the port side, but it looked as if it attacked him on purpose. Over and over, white water gave him a saltwater bath even through his thick, oil- and dirt-soaked work clothes.

“Did you hear me?” he said later.

For sure, he was cussing up a storm. I can’t blame him but it’s all part of the fun and games of working on the New Carissa. He sat on the south side of the Karlissa B barge later, heated by the sun, the steam rising off him like morning dew evaporating from grass.

No amount of cutting and torching was getting the crankshaft free.

Salvage Master Shelby Harris tried letting down on the port side of the stern, relaxing the anchor chains so the crane Big Red would have a better angle from which to lift the shaft.

That was a no-go.

By then the sun was starting to set. It was time to call it a day.

---

Friday, Sept. 5, 11:38 a..m., by Susan Chambers, Staff Writer

Scraptopia is no more.

At least for now.

Titan Salvage was finally able to get a floating barge out to the site of the New Carissa shipwreck on this week, thanks to the Skookum tugboat. Salvors finally transferred heaps of steel off the Karlissas A and B and onto the floating barge.

Now there’s room to work.

The painstaking slow transfer process dragged on and on -- well into the early evening hours.

Salvor Mike Pacheco warned early in the day it could be a late night.

Most of it was nearly invisible from shore. Salvors spent their time in Scraptopia -- the bow of the Karlissa B barge, the side facing the ocean -- most of the day. The crane Big Red and the engine room on the Karlissa B blocked the view of Scraptopia from shore. Indications of progress came via the handheld radios each crewman has:

“Down on de wire, down on de wire, Bille-e-e,” Panamanian Yuri “Tarantula” Mayani could be heard saying in his distinctive accent.

Crane operator Billy Stender’s reply often was silent -- but visible instead. It didn’t take long for Big Red to swing right, a multi-ton hunk of steel and metal parts caught in its web of cable and chains.

Salvors on the Karlissa B cut and cut and cut some more. Holes had to be made for chains and hooks to pick up the big pieces. Often, an upside-down corner piece of hull was used as a catch-all, a garbage bin full of smaller metal fragments.

The weather, thankfully, was nice. The wind and ocean swells died down enough so waves weren’t sloshing over the deck of the floating barge.

I gave Titan Managing Director David Parrot a bad time about being gone. He’d returned to Florida for a few days and Tuesday was his first day back.

The project needs its good luck charm, I told him.

Parrot -- also called General Chaos or Captain Chaos -- wasn’t buying it. He just shook his head and laughed.

Regardless, it was a nice homecoming for him. He shook hands and said hello to each of the crewmen and spent a lot of time with visitors to the barges and with Salvage Master Shelby Harris.

Parrot and Harris said work this week will be concentrated on the engine. Its full  300-plus-ton weight must be trimmed so that Big Red can pick it up.

But northwest winds continue to beat the hull as salvor use its protection while they cut the engine. The hull is smaller, significantly lighter and resembles nothing of the behemoth that once rose out of the surf. The ship now looks like a dead beast whose best parts were sacrificed to turkey vultures and scavengers, not much more than a carcass.