Jenkins Marine made a special delivery recently, transporting a large Sunseeker mould from Lee-on-Solent, Southampton to Sunseeker Poole. Sunseeker is the world’s leading brand for luxury performance motor yachts and from its manufacturing base in Poole produces around 150 luxury boats every year.
This was a complex operation that required towing a 30m x 11m pontoon barge (JML30) to Southampton to coincide with the spring tide using our twin screw motor tug ‘Handfast’ . Once on site the mould was loaded onto the pontoon barge from its road transport vehicle by a large, shore based hydraulic lifting crane. The crane itself required pre-planned road closures to reach the site and wind speeds could not exceed a lower safety limit for the crane’s safe operation due to its extended operating height.
Multi-role, shallow draft, workboat ‘Stour’ was also on hand to position pontoon barge JML30 close into the beach, directly in front of the crane at the optimum tidal moment. JML30 has a minimal draft of just 40cm, and the Stour just 60cm at the bow, meaning both vessels are ideally suited for getting very close to the shore for this type of operation.
The crane lifted the 28t mould carefully on to the pontoon, where it was quickly derigged and safely sea-fastened by our team for the tow back to Sunseeker Poole.
This was a challenging project which was successfully completed within a single day. Many different parties worked together to achieve a smooth operation, helped by some settled weather!.
If you have a requirement for marine operations in shallow or near shore projects, please feel free to get in touch to see where we can help.