In the middle parts of the ship it is probably not grounded, so you might have ropes below the hull with large inflatable balloons on both sides below water level, to give the ship extra lift. Then on a high tide, with oil & water removed, maybe some dredging on the sides where it needs to rotate to, and.. go!
Lets say they cabled a Goodyear blimp to each side of the ship One Goodyear blimp is about 5,000 m^3 and a meter^3 of seawater is about a ton, so that gives us 10,000 tones of lifting force!.
The ship weighs 220,000 so it will be riding about 4.5% higher in the water. The main channel is very narrow. Its bow is buried about 20m deep and 100m into the shallow bottom outside of the channel. They are not going to lift it out.
Just so everyone is clear: The company that handled the salvaging of the Costa Concordia is the company that is handling the salvaging of this ship. Same exact people! You can bet that they are going to be doing the best thing that can be done.
Using the same Concordia techniques maybe SMIT Salvage would float Evergreen to 'loosen' it a bit out of sand, loosen further by dredging, and then when high tide comes [1], Evergreen would be able to turn around with help of tug boats.
i'd swear someone changed my comment but no it was me i'm an idiot. it's not even the other larry! sergey brin. sergey brin flies in with a zeppelin & floats the boat.
