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Breakwater Beats the Weather at Holy Loch
01 Oct 2005
Intermarine Ltd has just completed a race against time to design, supply and install a floating breakwater and moorings in the Holy Loch on the west coast of Scotland. The breakwater for client Seavision Ltd creates a large area of protected water for the continuing development of moorings over the next three to five years.
The breakwater is 240m long by 3.8m wide with a total weight of 500 tons. It is comprised of 12 large pre-cast concrete pontoons, each of which is 20m long and weighs 42 tons. These units were manufactured in Finland by Marinetek Finland Oy and shipped directly to the site at Sandbank in Argyll.
The breakwater is held in position on a mooring system designed by Black & Veatch, comprised of 110m long heavy mooring chains held on thirty 500kg high holding power anchors, all supplied by Gael Force.
The units were delivered on the 88m LOA Dutch vessel MVNora and were unloaded at the marina's small private jetty. This process required detailed advance planning and coordination to ensure a safe and efficient operation. This included careful ship selection, the agreement of a loading plan for the vessel in Helsinki and detailed consultation with the customer, the jetty engineers and shipping agents.
Ainscough Crane Hire brought a 250 ton mobile crane over the mountain pass to be on site with the arrival of the vessel.
In order to facilitate a fast installation as autumn closed in, the breakwater's moorings were pre-laid to GPS positions prior to the pontoons arriving from Finland. This enabled the breakwater to be installed within 24 hours of MV Nora unloading its cargo. Harbour & Marine Ltd, Gareloch Support Services, and the Merrett Survey Partnership all participated in the installation.
MJ Information No: 21124
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