The worn-out passenger ship "Indepedia", which for years was at a dead end in Bonići near Tivat, sank last night for reasons that have not yet been officially determined.
According to the navigation safety inspector of the Port Authority of Kotor Željko Lompar, during the night they received a phone call from people living in Bonice, that the former 49,5-meter-long yacht had started taking in water and was slowly sinking.
Despite the efforts to overcome the penetration of water into the rotting wooden hull of "Independie" with pumps, the ship still sank early in the morning and "sat" with its keel in the mud in the shallow sea of Bonići bay. Only the main deck and part of its long-demolished superstructure remained above the sea surface.
The team of the Navy of the Army of Montenegro and the Maritime Safety Administration immediately surrounded the wreck with a floating dam, so that oil and oil residues would not spill out of it. In the flooded interior of the ship, special chemical dispersants were used to "break up" the smaller greasy stains that appeared from the "Independie" engine room.
Already in the morning, there were no more noticeable discharges of harmful substances into the sea from the wreck. According to inspector Lompar, the last official owner of "Independie" was the company "Bastion Commerc" from Kotor, but after that the ship unofficially changed owners at least once more.
"According to the law, in such cases the owner of the ship is obliged to remove the wreck at his own expense. If the real owner of "Independia" cannot be determined, the removal of its remains will be carried out by the state," said Lompar to "Vijesta", adding that due to the bad condition of the ship's hull, the possibility that the floating crane LDI-18 of the Navy of the Czech Republic would try to lift and move sunken ship.
"The most likely option is to cut the wreck on the spot, by gradually "pulling" the hull of "Independie" from the sea to the shore, because the ship is entirely made of wood and there would be no harmful effects on the environment. The company that owns the plot on the coast, however, does not accept it for now, so we will see how things will develop," Lompar pointed out.
By the way, "Independia" used to be a luxury yacht that sailed under the German flag, and its former German owner, German sailor and businessman Jens Vermter, brought the ship to Montenegro ten years ago and sold it here. When it was bought by "Bastion Komerc" in 2005, "Independia" was a beautifully arranged so-called classic luxury motor yacht, which Vermter built in detail from 1993-1999 by reconstructing the decommissioned minesweeper of the German Navy M-1068 "Algol", built in 1963.
It was one of a total of 30 fast minesweepers of the "Schütze" class built by the German Navy in the second half of the 49,5s and the first half of the 7,2s. The ship, 1,8 meters long, 20 wide and with a draft of 2.400 meters, was powered by two MTU diesel engines with a total power of XNUMX horses at a speed of XNUMX knots. Soon after the sale, "Independia" was neglected and began to deteriorate rapidly, first lying on a dead berth in the port of Risan, and later for years in Bonići, where it was slowly "shelled" by thieves and where it met its sad end. By the way, in a similar way, several scrapped or abandoned ships have already sunk in Boka Kotorska in recent years, most of which were subsequently removed in rather expensive technical operations.
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