Air Charter Service helps to rescue stranded vessel

Following a storm in Morocco last month a large vessel ran aground on the country’s shores. After initial attempts failed to shift the ship, Air Charter Service was called upon. Two tugs were dispatched from Gibraltar immediately after the incident occurred by a specialist salvage company and they headed straight to the port of Jorf Lasfar (just south of Casablanca) where the vessel was stuck. Unfortunately, they could only get within a few hundred metres of it, and the 64 mm towing wire that was onboard was too lightweight to pull the vessel from that distance. At this point the company telephoned ACS for their help. The salvage company had sourced a coil of 400 metres of specialist rope that was located in Athens. The quickest way to get it to the tugs at Jorf Lasfar was to charter an aircraft from Athens to Malaga and then drive it the rest of the way – a journey of around eight hours by truck. The towing wire is able to withstand in excess of three hundred tons and, with the aid of twenty special buoys (also transported on the charter), they were able to rescue the stricken vessel successfully.