One month after breaking free from its mooring and grounding on Lina Island, a HaiCo fishing lodge is floating safely again.
Using a tugboat and ballast in the hull, crews managed to pull the patched and welded Tasu I barge carrying the lodge off of the rocky east shore of Lina Island on Wednesday, Oct. 10.
After divers checked it for damage, the barge was taken back to its usual mooring at Alliford Bay for some final repairs.
Owned by HaiCo’s Westcoast Resorts, the lodge had been out by Hippa Island for the fishing season and was moored at Alliford Bay before it could be towed to Vancouver for the winter.
No one was injured when it broke loose from its anchor buoy at Alliford and drifted during an easterly, overnight storm on Sept. 8.
Besides a small fuel sheen on Sept. 11 and a dangerous leak of fuel vapours in the barge hold that slowed efforts to pump it clean of fuel, there were no spills of the estimated 33,000 litres of diesel and gasoline on board.
RCMP officers collected the mooring lines that were supposed to secure the Tasu I, and there is now an investigation into how it came free.
According to HaiCo, which is responsible for paying the cost of the response, the barge was secured according to the usual protocol, with two mooring lines running into a shackle on the buoy.