Opinion piece by Sun Media director/editor Brian Rogers

Tonight is a big night for Rena. Stranded on a reef, her hulk wracking and ripping from the third storm in as many weeks.

The people of the Bay are watching like nervous parents, seeing their wayward daughter about to end a rocky relationship with a troublesome boy.

The salvors have done an amazing job so far (amidst the comments of thousands of armchair experts like me) getting a thousand tonnes of the oily toxic gunk pumped out. But as the storm pummels Rena, the chances of getting that last several hundreds tonnes out is unknown.

One of two things will happen to Rena tonight, Tuesday. Either she will weather the storm swell and remain broken but intact on Astrolabe Reef; or she will break up.

If she breaks up, the front half is likely, according to Maritime NZ, to stay stuck hard on the reef. The stern half is likely to break clear and either float or sink.

Early in the saga, salvors talked about the chances of pushing the aft half back onto shallower waters of Astrolabe to make salvage easier.

Now they are saying that if the aft portion floats long enough, they would prefer the massive tug Go Canopus, which is tethered to the aft of Rena, to tow the portion to shallower water.

But the big story that has been overlooked is: Where are the preferred options?

This information has not been forthcoming from MNZ and our reporters at the daily news conferences say that much of the short time available to ask such pertinent questions has been sucked up by dumb questions. TVNZ has been a prime candidate in the dumb question department. One wonders if MNZ is quietly happy that valuable question time is being wasted on dumb questions, leaving the rest of the media, with sensible questions, to go unanswered.

Well that is really quite immaterial tonight, especially if Rena lets go and purges a thousand or so containers into the ocean.

The news tomorrow will be dominated by the drama of hundreds of steel boxes sinking, floating, washing ashore and causing general nautical mayhem.

However, back to the tow site options. This is a burning question in my mind and has probably not been considered by most of Joe Public. If the aft portion, assuming it floats, is not shoved onto the nearby shallows of Astrolabe, and floats long enough to be towed elsewhere, then the candidates must be Papamoa Beach, Matakana Island, or Motiti Island.

Wherever you park the broken remains of half a ship is not going to be a popular concept with the locals.

The Motiti folk have had more than enough battering and oiling from Rena and the rocky shoreline means it's probably the worst place to deliberately take half a shipwreck.

Matakana has been touted as the "ideal" place, by some sources within the local maritime industry. They say that the mess would be extreme, but for a short time in a confined area. And if the last 358 tonnes of oil breaks out, the sand would be easier to clean up than if it was unleashed on a rocky shoreline such as Motiti. The isolation of Matakana also provides a modicum of natural geographical crowd control, which might suit the officials.

But our sources within the industry have fingered Papamoa as the preferred destination for Rena's wayward chuff.

Assuming that the wrecked bits float long enough to be taken anywhere, a hulk beached in the shallows would then be cut up and removed over a period of months or years, depending on weather and access. An interesting scenario for the hundreds of multi million dollar residences along the beautiful coast.

Not a nice prospect for any part of our coastline.

However it is interesting that MNZ has kept mum about any of its plans for the aft section, should it break free and float.

One of our sources in the salvage team says the most likely time is between 8 and midnight tonight. He hasn't been wrong yet with any of his other predictions.

It will be an interesting night. Potentially a very sad night.