After a month of further preparations following the successfull uprighting of the REPUBBLICA DI GENOVA in Antwerp, actual operations to refloat the vessel were started by the SVITZER Salvage team Friday 05/10 as planned with testing the installed systems. These included pumping systems, some of them pre-installed prior to the parbuckling, and special pulling systems connected between the casualty and a barge alongside for stability support during critical phases of the refloating.

The testing phase was completed without difficulty and thus the actual refloating was started. The SVITZER Salvage team has succeeded in refloating the vessel with the present condition being as follows:

-                      vessel off the bottom and free floating;

-                      in total well over 55,000 tons of water had to be removed in a special developed sequence in order to maintain the maximum stability possible throughout;

-                      the list now is 5.5 to 6 degrees.

The plan now is to continue the pumping operations step by step in order to get the vessel in a condition that the rest of the cargo can be discharged. One of the compartments that still needs to be dewatered is the engineroom, which purposely has been kept underwater in order to not allow oxygen to reach engine parts now underwater and thus to prevent corrosion. Pumping of this compartment will be started only when crews can immediately start with engineroom preservation to prevent corrosion.