Ex-Valdez Leaves San Diego Bay : Environment: The Exxon tanker, repaired and renamed since its massive oil spill last year, battles protesters and fog to set sail for the Mideast.

Delayed first by environmentalists and then by the environment itself, the former Exxon Valdez left San Diego Bay six hours later than planned Wednesday, returning to service after 14 months of repairs with a new name, a new route and yet another encounter with Greenpeace under its belt.

In an elaborate pre-dawn send-off, members of the environmental activist group scaled the side of the tanker, which has been rechristened the Exxon Mediterranean, and unfurled a banner that read “Sane Energy: When?” Two demonstrators, handcuffed to each other, perched atop the huge rudder, while six more attempted to block the ship’s passage by forming a human oil boom in the chilly water.

San Diego Harbor Police officers quickly quashed the demonstration, arresting nine of about 40 protesters, according to Chief Arthur Le Blanc. But, by the time divers could confirm that demonstrators had not damaged the newly repaired hull of the tanker that caused the nation’s worst oil spill, Exxon faced another problem: fog.

“It was thick. Two hundred feet from the pier,” the ship disappeared, said Fred Hallett, vice president of National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., where the ship was built and received $30 million in repairs. “Somebody said, ‘She’s gone.’ And then the captain held her out in the channel for more than an hour.”

When the fog lifted, the Coast Guard and the Harbor Police escorted the Mediterranean out of the bay. At noon, the 987-foot ship finally set sail for Singapore, its first stop before heading to the Middle East.

In July, Exxon officials announced that, because of declining need to transport Alaskan crude oil, the embattled vessel would become the first U.S.-licensed tanker to enter foreign service. It will load Mideastern oil and deliver it to Europe, officials said.

Critics charged that the reassignment was a public relations move designed to distance the ship from Alaska’s Prince William Sound, where it ran aground March 24, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil and tearing up a third of its hull.

But Exxon officials said good business sense, not image-building, predicated the change. On Wednesday, Les Rogers, a spokesman for Exxon Shipping Co., seemed unfazed by the protests and delays, saying he was just pleased that the vessel was on its way.

“We’re ready for the voyage,” he said, noting that the Mediterranean had demonstrated its seaworthiness in 10 days of ocean trials that ended last week.

Greenpeace organizers, who assembled members from around the country for their early-morning protest, said their intention was both to delay the launch and to make the connection between oil spills and the military buildup in the Middle East.

“We intended to stop the Exxon Valdez for as long as we could, but we also did it to make a point,” said Kelly Quirke, a Greenpeace campaigner based in San Francisco, who said a second banner, which the protesters failed to hang, said, “From Alaska to Iraq, America’s Dying for Oil.”

“There are two wars going on right now--a war on the environment and an oil war,” Quirke said. “They can’t be separate, because the root is the same: over-dependence on fossil fuels.”

Dave Hollister, a Greenpeace action coordinator from Washington, said six boats carrying about 40 Greenpeace members, including two trained rescue divers, approached the tanker before sunrise at about 4:15 a.m.

Four climbers equipped with 16-foot ladders and compressed nitrogen suction cups headed up the side of the tanker with the intention of hanging the two banners. Before they could do so, however, the suction cups failed, causing three of the climbers to fall into the water.

Later, Hollister said, they managed to attach the smaller banner to the ship.

The two protesters who attempted to lock themselves to the tanker’s steering column at the top of the rudder soon found that it was too big to encircle with their arms. So they “improvised,” Hollister said, handcuffing themselves to each other instead.

Meanwhile, the six people who made up the human boom chained themselves in place around a 20-foot inflatable globe that was painted to resemble the Earth.

During the protest, Nassco’s oil boom was slightly damaged, according to Hallett, who seemed more amused than distressed by the occurrence.

“Here are individuals protesting the use of oil,” he said with irony, “and it appears that they damaged an environmental safeguard to the ship.”

In general, however, law enforcement officials noted that the protesters were well-behaved.

“They were very civil,” said Le Blanc, the chief of Harbor Police. “When they were told they were under arrest, they acquiesced very peacefully.”

All nine protesters who were arrested were charged with misdemeanors--ranging from trespassing to creating a disturbance, Le Blanc said. They were cited and released on their own recognizance, he said.

Christopher Gaunya, 28, a full-time Greenpeace employee from Washington, was the only person to be injured during the protest, organizers said. When the suction cups he was using to climb the tanker failed, he said, he fell, hit a floating oil boom and sprained his elbow. When asked if the protest was worth the pain, he replied, “Definitely.”

“I have peers in Saudi Arabia right now who possibly will be giving their lives for oil,” said Gaunya, who attended a Greenpeace news conference with his right arm in a sling. “I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again tomorrow.”