Jody F Millennium's bills close to $15m

The Japanese-owned - Korean chartered - log carrier Jody F Millennium is likely to leave its owners and insurers with a bill close to $15 million from the 18 days it was stuck on a Gisborne sandbar.

Forty tonnes of heavy fuel oil began leaking from the ship's ruptured tanks soon after the ship ran aground of Waikanae Beach in Gisborne on February 6.

Hundreds of workers cleaned up oil-polluted sand and much of the heavy, viscous oil in the ship's tanks was transferred into the Navy tanker, HMNZS Endeavour.

The ship was aground for 18 days before thousands of logs were lifted off by helicopter or barge, and salvage tugs from Australia towed it into deep water.

Maritime Safety Authority director Russell Kilvington said the clean-up bill alone was more than $2.5 million.

He said the amount easily surpassed the $1.4 million the authority spent removing and cleaning up oil from the fishing boat Dong Won, which ran aground and sank at Stewart Island in October 1998.

Mr Kilvington said the bill was about to be sent to the log carrier's insurers, who had undertaken to pay most if not all of it.

It is also estimated that getting the 150m ship off the beach cost $6 million and that repairs to the badly damaged hull cost a similar amount.

After it was cleared, the ship was towed to Tauranga where the rudder, jammed from 18 days on the beach, was removed and the propeller was locked in place.

The ship was then towed to Japan, where it went into dry dock on April 24 to fix several splits in the hull.

The cost of the 40-day tow from Tauranga to Japan is not known, but is expected to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The ship was salvaged by Australian firm United Salvage, but company spokesman Ian Hoskison said it was unlikely to be paid by the owners or their insurers for several months.

The cost to the New Zealand authorities would be paid by the ship's liability insurers, he said.

Mr Hoskison said that while the bill to salvage the Jody F Millennium from the beach was not the biggest in the world, it was a "significant sum in anybody's language".

He said had the ship broken up and become a wreck, it could still have been removed from the beach, but the cost would have been high.

Mr Hoskison said the damage to the hull was more than the salvage team expected.

The worst damage was an 8m breach of the hull into the number five ballast tank on the starboard side.

In some places the split was 1m wide.

"It was a sizeable hole, which surprised us," Mr Hoskison said.

Salvage engineers made up a steel box and welded it over the split for the tow to Japan.

- NZPA

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