By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

THE Emerald Express, left stranded miles inland by Hurricane Joaquin in early October, has been successfully relaunched off the northern point of Crooked Island after a month-long operation that saw island officials dredge a road and tow the massive ship six miles overland.

Officials from Emerald Express arrived on Crooked Island two weeks after Joaquin to start the process of relaunching the vessel. Shortly after their first assessment representatives of the boat’s owners suggested that existing roadways would have to be widened to allow for the boat to be returned to the sea.

According to sources, in early November heavy equipment operators started the dredging of a six-mile roadway space to connect Horse Pond, where the boat had been stranded, to an existing shallow pond which streams into the waters of Lovely Bay.

After the dredging of the canal, officials used special airbags and heavy machinery to haul the vessel over the six miles with labourers creating a moving line of airbags along the way.

The barge, once near the shallow pond area, had to be floated “carefully” in six feet of water for another 15 miles until it made its way out to sea.

“The process was something to see,” said one local who assisted with the relaunch. He told The Tribune that the effort to return the vessel to the water was something he never imagined he would see.

“I thought it would have to stay inland, I thought it couldn’t be done,” he added.

Emerald Express officials were assisted in the four and half week process by representatives from the Crooked Island branch of the Bahamas Electrical Corporation and local residents.

The Emerald Express, with a crew of eight, was left stranded 21 miles inland on Crooked Island by the hurricane, which made landfall in the southern Bahamas on October 1.

A crew member told The Tribune in November: “The winds just threw us where it wanted to. We decided to go along with the breeze, trying just to balance the boat with the wind so that we didn’t roll over. We floated like two days at sea until we got into shallow water all the way to the other side of Lovely Bay where the boat beached.”

The ship’s two 750hp engines proved useless against the storm’s 135mph winds. Crew members said the water had risen to such a height that they thought that they were still on the high seas.

The storm was so severe that the crew of the US container ship El Faro perished. The El Faro was carrying a cargo of vehicles from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico when it went down in 15,000 feet of water.

The ship’s crew of 28 Americans and five Poles were lost.

Hurricane Joaquin ravaged the central and southern Bahamas on October 1 and 2.