The Susan Rose Salvage Underway

The Susan Rose Salvage Underway

Those driving through Point Pleasant Beach may notice a strange vessel just sitting off the coastline. This ship looks like it is shaped like a triangle and has three giant poles coming out the corners. A deep dive into the internet and we can quickly see what it is and what is going on.

This ship is the Northstar’s Jack-up-Barge named Voyager commonly known as a lift boat. It is 91 feet long and can lift itself 100 feet into the sky using its legs. There are many practical uses for such a vessel on any coast but for Point Pleasant Beach it’s for fixing a mistake.

Back on November 19, the 77-foot steel commercial trawler, known as the Susan Rose, sunk after it had been grounded on the shoreline just two days earlier.

This maritime incident happened during an attempt to tow the vessel to a Staten Island shipyard. As crews pulled her off the coastline, she started to take on water which ended with her sitting in 48 feet of water just 1,000 feet from the shore.

This sunken vessel has become a hazard to the Manasquan Inlet and will need to be removed.

Susan Rose Sinks Off Jersey Coast

It was at the time of the sinking that plans to remove the trawler got underway. It is during these winter months when most of the New Jersey coastline is hammered with storms making any immediate recovery impossible but crews need to investigate and prepare.

The Northstar Voyager was placed just above the wreckage on Tuesday and will become the crew headquarters as they investigate and work on the ship.

Even though the ship had been pumped off all of her fuel, there are a few other pollutants from the ship that needed to be removed. Some of these pollutants would have been ok to leave in the water if a recovery were to take place within weeks but since it could be months things need to be removed.

The United States Coast Guard is still investigating what went wrong with the tow to cause such an incident.

As the vessel has been declared a complete loss, the crews are exploring alternative methods for raising it. This includes the consideration of dismantling it into pieces before carefully loading them onto a barge.

Details on the removal of the vessel have not been announced.