They brought in a dredger and removed 30k tons of sand.

Then there was a high tide, and they had a couple really big seagoing tugs. It's really about as simple as that. There's a really big difference between the dinky harbor tugs they started with and the seagoing tugs they eventually brought in. Harbor tugs need to turn fast but just need to bump a ship up against a pier. Sea tugs have the power to pull a dead ship in the open ocean.

Sometimes the answer really is "they're working on it, and it'll be done when its done". It might seem like they were working on it for days, but when you factor in the tides they only had maybe 10-15 hours where they were really able to apply force with any hope of it having an effect.