JoeGoaUk's Point of View: Arossim beach grounded pontoon

Thursday, 14 July 2016

Arossim beach grounded pontoon

Pontoon named Bhageeratha or Bhagirath (भागीरथ) got grounded at Arossim beach around 16th April 2016. The Area comes under Cansaulim Arrossim Cuelim (CAC) Panchayat in South Goa

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joegoauk73/26451770072/
The pontoon ( the floating deck / platform, event deck) was brought here around 14 -15 April 2016 at Arossim beach behind Hotel Park Hyatt for a private party / event / function.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joegoauk73/26478045771/

The pontoon was mounted with A/C porta cabins, Gensets or generators etc and was to be used as main event deck (Wedding? celebrations, dancing floor etc). Watch video day 5, 11and 21
The idea of floating deck event / celebrations horribly went wrong due to rough sea, waves, under current etc as a result, whole thing was abandoned or put off. The deck (pontoon) eventually got grounded.

Several deadlines were missed out by the owners (Arihant?) which were put to them by the local authorities including Dy. Collector. Their excuses were - late arrival of crawler crane, heavy rains, breakdown of winch, breakdown of crane, snapping or breaking of cable wires winching etc.

A tug MT Lotus which came to rescue was also grounded around 23rd April (Watch video day 11)

First, they tried to pull the pontoon using Crane, winch cable pulling, it did not work, then they cut the pontoon into two halves, that did not work either.

Then they started cutting the deck into pieces in the sea and pulled up piece by piece.
Whole of pontoon finally removed from the sea on the night of 24th June 2016 (Video day 71)
They were given 5 days to clear off the debris from the beach by shifting the metal scrap elsewhere.
They missed this deadline too, this time, their excuse was 'no suitable site found yet to dump the debris'

It took or taking more than 3 months to remove the pontoon from the sea and completely clear off the debris or cut pieces of the pontoon from the beach / site.
When visited last i.e. 13.7.16, 2pm, they were still in the process of shifting or transporting the metal scrap to Birla (Watch video Day 89)

14 Videos updates / pics from 20 April to 13 July

Day 5 20/4/16