“Ice pirate” Nicholas Sloane wants to cart a 125million-ton ‘berg across the sea – only to melt it down for drinking water. Sloane, 56, is a professional marine salvager who recently oversaw the refloating of capsized Italian cruise ship the Costa Concordia. And he now hopes to solve South Africa’s water crisis by nabbing an iceberg from the South Pole, Bloomberg reveals. Severe drought in 2017 led to Cape Town nearly running out of water, and the city – which Sloane calls home – still has restrictions of 70 litres per day. “My wife used to take a bath every night and a shower every morning. She told me, ‘You’d better do something’,” Sloane said. He now plans to harness and tow an enormous Antarctic iceberg, and then convert it into drinkable water. “To make it economically feasible, the iceberg will have to be big,” Sloane explained. He said it would need to be 3,281 feet long, 1,640 feet wide, 820 feet deep – and weigh around 125 million tonnes. “That would supply about 20% of Cape Town’s water needs for a year,” he added. Sloane has reportedly assembled a crack team of glaciologists, oceanographers and engineers to bag the ‘berg. And he’s even secured funding from a group of financiers to fund his ‘Southern Ice Project’. The entire mission is expected to cost upwards of $200million (£158million). This will largely be funded by two South African banks and a Swiss water tech firm called Water Vision AG, the report claims. Sloane now needs to secure an agreement with South Africa for the nation to buy the Antarctic water. “We’ll never get back to the days where water is flowing all over the Cape,” he said. If the taps run dry, the first day people will be standing in lines at watering points throughout the city. “The second day, if you don’t get your water, well, people are killed for that.”