Jenkins Marine was contracted to carry out the collection and delivery from Lee on Solent of a mould, built by Monster Cam, back to the Sunseeker facility in Poole Harbour for a new line of vessels.
This was a challenging project where we had multiple parties involved to coordinate the planning together and ensure it was a successful operation. The challenges, as for all of these types of projects, was the consideration of a good weather window for both the tow and the crane. In addition, the best high tide conditions were required to allow the transportation barge to come close within the crane radius to facilitate the loadout operations.
We had an early start on in the morning for all our vessels for timely arrival prior to the lift operations just before midday. Before our arrival the mould was transported across the road and onto the beach loadout point of the old hovercraft port at HMS Daedalus airport and where the large 500t crane, supplied by Ainscough, was in position above the beach surf line to ensure it was within the crane radius of the Barge at high tide.
We moved the transportation barge close to the shore with the assistance of the Stour and used the spud legs to anchor both the workboat and the barge safe onto the shore line edge. We managed to get a good break in the wind and with the barge in position we managed to edge the 28t mould safely onto the barge. The crane lifting slings were released and the spud legs were lifted to edge the barge back into deeper water while all the sea fastenings were made safe and signed off by the tow surveyor in preparation for the journey back to Poole Harbour.
Once out in deeper water the tow tug Handfast made the tow connection and the Stour released her lines from the transportation barge. The vessels were ready to sail back to Poole.
On arrival to Poole the operations were paused till the next day where the mould was finally moved to the Sunseeker Facility and offloaded to start its long-term working life on the new vessel production line. This project was very well planned with all the challenges of wide load transportation onshore with permit requirements, beach operation preparation, planning for the crane positioning with suitable radii and the consideration of all the vessels to carry out a safe operation for another successful delivery.
If you would like to know more or allow us to assist your project challenges for marine operations such as this, please feel free to get in touch and we would be happy to get involved.