MV Tricolor
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MV Tricolor was a 50,000 tonne Norwegian-flagged vehicle carrier, built in 1987.
During the early hours of December 14, 2002, while travelling from Zeebrugge to Southampton, she was struck by Kariba, a 1982 built Bahamian-flagged container ship in the French Exclusive Economic Zone some 20 miles north of the French coast in the English Channel. No lives were lost.
The Channel is one of the busiest seaways in the world and the next night the wreck was struck by a German vessel, the Nicola, which had to be towed free. On 1 January 2003 the Turkish-registered fuel carrier Vicky struck the same wreck, but was freed by a rising tide.
The salvage operation of the Tricolor was led by the Dutch company Smit International. Starting in July 2003, it was declared complete on October 27, 2004. The salvage method included a diamond-encrusted cutting wire to slice the wreck into nine 3000-tonne sections, a technique similar to one the same company used in salvaging the Russian submarine Kursk.
C.T. Systems, together with Thales Navigation, installed the C.T. Systems Viking Anchoring software to handle the navigational aspects of the operation. The positioning equipment consisted of a Thales Aquarius LRK GPS receiver and a Thales 3011 GPS heading sensor, using a Belgian LRK reference station providing an accuracy of a few centimeters. Using a side scan sonar all the debris had been located and all the relevant X, Y,Z information had been converted to a Viking chart, to enable the Taklift 4 to do a systematic search and recovery off all the remaining debris.
The cargo of 2,871 new cars - mostly from premium German and Swedish manufacturers including BMW and Volvo, worth £30m (representing a retail value of £60m), was removed from the wreck and destroyed. Most oil was removed from the ship's tanks soon after it sank, but during the salvage there was a small 540-tonne oil spill, sparking concern.
