Ship sinking cancelled due to towing problems
(CNS): After seven years in the planning and just two weeks away from the scheduled sinking of the USS Kittiwake the project has been cancelled. Although, the Cayman Islands Tourism Association (CITA) has not revealed the exact details the organisation said it was as a result of being unable to tow the vessel to Cayman and was beyond its control. The ship was to form the islands’ latest dive attraction by creating an artificial reef and new dive park. A number of special events had been organised around this months sinking. Although CITA says the vessel would still be sunk in local waters this year it will now be postponed until after the hurricane season which ends on 30 November.
“The Cayman Islands Tourism Association (CITA) regrets to inform the public of an urgent situation that has arisen which will cause the Kittiwake sinking events …to be postponed,” the association said in a statement on Friday ( 9 July). “The CITA has done everything in their power to execute the necessary preparations to have the ship towed, but unfortunately, due to circumstances out of their control, the ship is unable to be towed from the US to Grand Cayman by the necessary date. “
CITA said the exact date of the postponed sinking will be announced as soon as possible but it was taking measures to mitigate the effects of this inconvenience on media, visiting journalists, guests and ex-crew members who all planned to attend and witness the sinking.
Ex-crew member John McGrath, who had been awarded a trip as a prize for the best story in a contest made light of the postponement. “This isn’t the first time that the old girl has been late for an assignment,” he said. ! If the US Navy, with all the power and money backing them, has delays, then I can certainly see why the Cayman Islands would have delays.”
CITA apologized for to all parties involved and said it would release further information as soon as it could.
Category: Local News
I might be one of the few people happy about this delay. I’ve been waiting years to see this sinking take place, and then they went and planned it during my vacation when I’ll be off island. Hopefully I will be here for the rescheduled date.
I wonder if a surprise "really big" towing insurance bill just arrived???
This is what happens when people start to pray.
XXXXXX
Lets keep praying that this ship never reaches our shores.
The National Conservation Law will be passed beore the sinking, we can all object to having it dumped in our waters under this law.
We have enough old wrecks, this new one is a bunch of XXXXX people with power doing what they want to contaminate our country’s waters.
God if you are listening sink this ship long before it reaches our shores.
CITA if you can’t do good, then please do no harm.
You are missing the point why people sinking warships round the world is to create new reef as reef are dying. It give new home for the fishes means happy divers and happy fishing men. CITA is NOT contaminate the water as it is no worst than people on land WHO are contaminate the water, ie Trashmore and plastic bags in sea.
IIRC the fishermen ca’t fish there any way so "happy fishermen"? Nah.
If, as you say, the ship is as much a contaminant as Trashmore and plastic bags, then CITA is contaminating the water. Just because B (kittiwake) isn’t worse than A (trashmore) in your equation doesn’t mean that B=0. Just that you’ve doubled the pollution level (A=B; A+B=2A).
Which suggests that if your solution to reefs dying is to dump ships on top of them then we will continue to have dead reefs.
So it hasn’t been cancelled, it’s been postponed hasn’t it, so why report it as cancelled? I suppose accuracy plays a lesser role than captivating headlines in the Cayman Islands.
I think it probably stems from Americans (we’ll blame them anyway), but for some unknown reason Caymanians love to say cancelled when they mean postponed! Almost as annoying as those who say they ‘could care less’ when they mean that they couldn’t care less!
Thanks for pointing that out! The "I could care less" epidemic seems to be growing. Nobody seems to think about the meaning of the words. I blame Howard Stern, who used to say that all the time. It’s probably not his fault, but he’s a public figure who can be blamed, so why not?
I told ya’ll that ole gal wasn’t goin down that easy!