Dali cargo ship, which crashed into Key Bridge, is set to be refloated and moved early Monday morning

Dana Munro, Baltimore Sun
Updated ·3 min read

The Dali cargo ship is set to be refloated Monday morning, the Key Bridge Response Unified Command announced Saturday afternoon.

After sitting stuck in the Patapsco River following its March 26 crash into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the vessel is scheduled to leave its position at high tide Monday around 5:24 a.m. after being prepped for the journey to a local marine terminal around 2 a.m. The entire process to move the ship is estimated to take about 21 hours, according to a Unified Command news release.

The sequence of preparation activities for the ship to undergo before the transit is scheduled to start 18 hours beforehand Sunday.

During those 18 hours, the crews will release anchors and mooring lines currently attached to the ship, de-ballast some or all of the 1.25 million gallons of water pumped onto the ship to compensate for the weight removed from it last Monday and be inspected for any remaining obstructions that may have been missed by dive survey teams.

Once the ship is free, up to five tugboats will shuttle it 2.5 miles to a nearby terminal, pushing it at about a mile per hour.

Related Articles

Clearing the Dali from the bridge area is key to reopening the river’s main 50-foot-deep, 700-foot-wide shipping channel, which has been closed since the late March crash nearly eight weeks ago and is expected to be reopened by the end of the month.

During Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said he is proud of the progress made so far in clearing the channel.

“Despite the fact that people said [clearing the channel] could take six or nine months, I am proud that we are on track and by the end of May, we will have that federal channel opened and within days, we are going to have that massive vessel out of the channel,” Moore said.

One of the commitments Moore said he made when the bridge fell was to have the bridge rebuilt on time and on budget.

Acknowledging criticism from lawmakers over President Joe Biden’s promise to have the Key Bridge reconstruction project fully funded by the federal government, Moore said the American people “will be made whole” and that his focus remains on timely project completion.

“For people concerned about the cost, my thing is this: The American people will be made whole on this,” Moore said. “We just have to make sure we get this done fast and on time and on budget and that is our focus.”

The announcement of the refloating date follows a major step in the process that occurred last Monday when crews used explosives to break apart a section of the bridge that was weighing down the top of the ship’s bow. The ship has been dormant in position with crews onboard for more than 50 days. Six people working on the bridge when it was struck by the Dali and were presumed dead the next day. Their bodies have all since been recovered from the river.

After the Dali’s journey to the terminal, crews will remove more wreckage from the bow and some of the roughly 4,500 containers on board. It will then undergo various inspections by entities including the National Transportation Safety Board, which will attempt to gather more information about what led to the crash.

Baltimore Sun reporters Matt Hubbard and Dillon Mullan contributed to this article.