Kapodistras

The 1972 built 187 metre long, 16 446 gross ton Motor Vessel Kapodistras ran aground and was wrecked on Thunderbolt Rock. Cape Recife on the 29th July 1985.

The Kapodistras was Panamian registered by it’s Greek owners and built by Hakodate Dock Co. Ltd., Hakodate, Japan.

The wreck is a popular diving and spearfishing spot:

Gletwyn Rubidge spears a bronzebream from a cave on the wreck of the Kapodistrias – viz 10m, depth 9m.

The 118-metre Kapodistrias left the Port of Port Elizabeth at 13:45 bound for Montreal in Canada carrying a cargo of 7,500 tons of manganese ore, 27,653 tons of sugar, as well as zirconium and rutile. Between 14:00 and 15:30, which was high tide, the vessel took the inner passage and ran aground on the eastern part of the notorious Thunderbolt Reef about one kilometre offshore. The stricken vessel was a Greek bulk carrier built by Hakodate Dock Co. Muroran, a port city on the south coast of Japan’s Hokkaidō island but registered in Panama. It was now estimated that the Kapodistrias was about one sea mile from the shore, not far from the boiler of the Pati, a freighter which also came to grief on Thunderbolt Reef.

See more and images here: http://thecasualobserver.co.za/port-elizabeth-of-yore-thunderbolt-reef-claims-another-victim/

According to a report in the Herald, Assistant Port Captain of Port Elizabeth, Captain Bruce Etherington stated that attempts to pull the Kapodistrias off the rocks could not be made until more facts were known. “We have to assess the situation first. We’ll have men out there at first light. I don’t know whether she is taking water. There is a possibility that the bunker oil might spill into the sea if the bunker tanks are holed. As far as the pollution aspect is concerned, it depends on the amount and type of oil”. As the Kapodistrias was capable of carrying as much as 1,000 tons of bunker oil, spillage was a concern for the authorities.

More Wreck Info here.

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Shipwrecks in Algoa Bay