With winter closing in fast, storms in the Barents Sea prevented work on raising the stricken Kursk submarine Sunday and meant that the lifting operation was unlikely before the second half of the week, a naval spokesman said.
Overnight winds of almost 65 kilometers an hour whipped up heavy seas and made salvage work impossible, the spokesman for Russia's Northern Fleet, Vladimir Navrotsky, said.
"We expect the winds to lessen by the end of the day, and if our forecasts are correct we should be able to resume work early Monday," he said.
The last remaining task to be carried out before the hydraulic cranes aboard the huge salvage barge Giant-4 can begin winching the 20,000-ton wreck to the surface is to attach steel cables to the 26 holes that have been cut into the Kursk's hull.
The attachment process is expected to last two or three days, and so the lifting process is unlikely to begin before Wednesday or more probably Thursday.
A spokeswoman for the Dutch company Mammoet-Smit, Larissa van Seumeren, said Saturday that the raising could begin "late Tuesday or Wednesday."
The Giant-4 salvage barge moved into position over the wreck last Thursday and has remained in place despite the storms thanks to eight heavy anchors.
The raising of the Kursk, which sank in unexplained circumstances on August 12 last year killing all 118 seamen on board, was originally set for September 15.
Time is running dangerously short before the Arctic winter storms set in and make the operation virtually impossible.
The decision to raise the wreck was taken in line with a pledge by President Vladimir Putin to the seamen's families that their bodies would be recovered -- MURMANSK, Russia (AFP)
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