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Challenging Underwater Hull Repair 'Routine' Off Malta
01 Sep 2002
UMC's challenge to ship owners to throw technical afloat problems at them has resulted in a successful underwater repair. The job was carried out as a joint effort between UMC's head office in Chandlers Ford UK and the branch in Rotterdam.
A ship owner contacted UMC and told them they had a near corrosion hole in an area of flat bottom plating inside one of the cargo tanks of a vessel bound for Malta. Although the corrosion had not propagated through the hull completely, tests had revealed less than comfortable thickness readings at the spot and other corrosion pits in the immediate surrounding area.
A joint team of expert diver welders departed from Rotterdam and the UK to meet up in Malta.
Necessary equipment was also freighted out in time to meet the vessel upon its arrival at Malta anchorage. Despite bad weather effecting progress at the start of the job, the UMC divers were able to place a 2,550 by 1,150 mm cofferdam on the flat bottom of the vessel.
The defective plating was then removed and new plating inserted accordingly as per UMC's class approved procedure.
The resulting repair is considered "permanent" and further extends UMC' record of routinely performing hull insert operations, either including or excluding appendages.
Meanwhile UMC's Dubai branch demonstrated that no job is too little to tackle, its divers using two 25 tonne lifting straps to raise a small boat which sank near a jetty.
MJ Information No: 17467
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