PORT ANGELES — A 601-foot tanker that was refloated last week after it ran aground in Alaska is due in with escort to Port Angeles Harbor today, the Coast Guard said Monday.
The Seabulk Pride left Alaska’s Kachemak Bay last Wednesday after the Puget Sound captain of the port cleared it to sail down the coast first to Port Angeles, then to the Tesoro refinery dock in Anacortes to offload its cargo of heavy crude and gasoline.
Then the seven-year-old, double-hulled tanker will sail to a dry dock in Victoria for repairs to two small cracks in its outer hull.
The Seabulk Pride’s first port of call in Washington state will be Port Angeles, where a joint Coast Guard and state Department of Ecology inspection team, along with an American Bureau of Shipping surveyor, will meet the ship today, said Capt. Steven Metruck, captain of the port of Puget Sound.
Ice floe hits ship
The Seabulk Pride was being loaded at a Tesoro Refinery dock on the Kenai Peninsula on Feb. 2 when an ice floe knocked it from its moorings.
It drifted onto a nearby beach, where it was grounded upright.
During a high tide the next day, three tugboats pulled the tanker into the deeper waters of Cook Inlet.
Coast Guard officials in Alaska said an investigation, completed with the help of divers, found a water ballast tank in its outer hull with two 5-inch to 7-inch cracks.
The cracks were temporarily repaired with a cement patch to restore the tanker’s seaworthiness, Metruck said.
The Seabulk Pride, which is owned by Seabulk International Inc. and leased to Tesoro Alaska Co., also lost an anchor and incurred other topside damage, the Coast Guard said.