Rough seas delay salvage operation for burning ship

Rough waters forced authorities on Wednesday to postpone a salvage operation for the ship packed with VW Group cars that has been on fire for a week in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a port official said.

With teams unable to board the Felicity Ace, heavy tug boats sprayed water to cool the vessel, which is carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys.

The 22 crew members were evacuated last Wednesday, the day the fire began.

Some vehicles are electric and their lithium-ion batteries have made the fire very difficult to extinguish, port officials have said.

João Mendes Cabeças, the captain of the nearest port on the Azorean island of Faial, said the blaze had lost its intensity, probably because there was little left to burn.

Salvage teams hoped to board the ship, adrift around 105 miles southwest of the Portuguese islands of Azores, to assess its condition and start preparing it for towing, the navy said in a statement on Tuesday.

It is unclear if the vessel will be towed to the Bahamas or Europe.

Cabeças told Reuters bad weather prevented the team from boarding the ship. Waves as high as 8 feet battered the coast of Faial on Wednesday, Portugal's weather agency IPMA said.

The salvage team was expected to be flown to the ship on a helicopter belonging to the Portuguese air force, which will decide Thursday if the operation can proceed, Cabeças said.

Ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd (MOL) said in a statement Tuesday the vessel was still on fire but stable, and that no oil leak had been reported so far. It did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the cause of the fire.

Prelminary estimates on the potential loss from the disaster have topped $335 million.