The heavy-lift industry is called on to manage unique projects that often require transporting large or heavy structures long distances. Recently, the Norwegian specialized heavy transportation and installation contractor OHT was assigned the unique challenge of transporting a 590-foot-long floating dry-dock nearly 10,500 nautical miles for Promaritime.
The floating dry-dock, which measures 590 feet in length and 121 feet in width, was located in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It needed to be transported to northern Europe for ultimate deployment in France.
The vessel assigned the task of moving the dry-dock was the Hawk. While it is among the top five largest semi-submersible heavy lift vessels in the world, the Hawk only has 515 feet of free deck length available.
The solution developed by OHT was to diagonally load the massive dry-dock for the voyage. That meant that the dry-dock would be overhanging the sides of the vessel, which already has a beam of 182 feet. The width of the overall transport was close to 400 feet with the dry-dock overhanging each side of the Hawk by approximately 105 feet.
“With the exceptional experience of the captain and crew on board the vessel, Hawk was able to safely navigate around Cape of Good Hope with only minimal delays due to adverse weather and without stopping in any safe haven such as Port Elizabeth,” reports OHT.
The transit was completed in 40 days. The day after the Hawk arrived in Brest, the dry-dock was offloaded. It was then towed to the Damen shipyard where it is currently completing repairs and receiving a new coat of paint. After the shipyard, the dry-dock will be towed to the port of Rouen, where it will begin operations.
(photos courtesy of OHT)
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