More than two years after the luxury liner Costa Concordia wrecked off the Italian island of Giglio, killing 32 people, its wreckage has finally begun its voyage to a salvage yard in the port of Genoa.
As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, the operation is complex, involving a 14-boat convoy. She filed this report for our Newscast unit:
"Boat sirens and fog horns sounded through the tiny Italian port of the island of Giglio when the moorings of the Costa Concordia were finally loosened.
"The 15,000-ton vessel — the size of three football fields — had been flipped upright last September in a complex operation called parbuckling.
"Then, 10 days ago, salvage workers and engineers began to refloat and stabilize the ship.
"This morning, encased in a straightjacket of 30 fotation tanks, and escorted by a 14-vessel convoy, the ship began its journey. At a steady speed of 2 knots an hour, she's expected to arrive in Genoa on Sunday.
"The convoy includes a marine-mammal spotting boat as it sails through the Tuscan archipelago, Europe's largest marine sanctuary."
We'll leave you with time-lapse video of the first hours of the operation:
Back in September, we posted a time-lapse video of the Costa Concordia being righted.
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