Following an agreement between the vessel owners and Resolve Salvage & Fire (Europe), Inc., Resolve undertook the wreck removal of the French cable-laying vessel, CHAMAREL. After suffering an accommodation fire on August 9, 2012, the 118.2m vessel eventually drifted aground and flooded approximately 30 km north of Henties Bay, Namibia.
Seeing as the damage incurred during the grounding ruled out any chance of refloating the vessel, Resolve began making preparations for the wreck removal. First, an access road was built to the casualty to allow for equipment and personnel access. This enabled Resolve to conduct partial hull removal, asbestos remediation and install pad-eyes for the 350 mt hydraulic chain pullers. Once the setup was complete, the casualty was pulled to the beach using a total of 13 chain pullers, with a combined pulling capacity of over 4,500 mt. Soon after the casualty was on the beach, the scrapping teams started to dismantle the remaining 5000 mt of hull into manageable pieces. All of the scrap pieces were subsequently sold to a local scrapper for final processing.
Due to the remoteness of the job, heavy equipment was used to create a construction site out of beach sand. In addition, Resolve mobilized over 50 containers of specialized salvage equipment from the U.S. and U.K. warehouses in order to support the job. Upon completion of the wreck removal, Resolve restored the beach to its original condition, fulfilling its commitment to leaving the world a better place.
Resolve successfully completed the wreck removal in July 2013.
