NavList:

Alan,

Depths are in meters. The ship can just navigate in water 10 meters deep. Where the ship finally came to rest, there is a steep slope. There's lots of very deep water all around. And as I noted previously, if there's a storm of any consequence, I would not be surprised if the ship slides off into much deeper water.

Yes, the gash on the port side is a bit more than 150 feet long, and at the stern end, the rock that did it is shorn off and embedded in the hull --a roughly twenty foot wide boulder. Looks like a tooth. There are lots of spectacular photos of this on news web sites. Go to "Google News" and search on "Costa Concordia". Note that the tear begins well back off the middle of the vessel on the port stern. That implies something about the turn they were making when they hit.

You wondered about the speed. There is some reasonnable AIS data showing a speed of 15 knots less than five minutes before the ship would have hit Le Scole. I would assume they were slowing as they came in to see the lights of the island so maybe 10 knots at the time of impact.

-FER

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