Henriksen boosts boat safety

Unveiled by the company at Mercator Media Ltd’s Seawork Asia exhibition in Shanghai earlier this month, the systems are said to provide an additional level of information and control so that ship owners can closely monitor the conditions and progress of their vessel launching operations.

They were originally designed to be used together, but can now work independently as stand-alone safety features that can be fitted to any of the hooks in the Henriksen range.

Henriksen says its new LiftView system, which features a high quality sensor, addresses the dangers that can come with attempting to lift an overloaded boat. The sensor gives an accurate visual indication of the hook’s load in real-time and sounds an alarm for the operator is safety levels are exceeded. This might occur through carrying excess cargo and passengers. It also provides a measurements of the degrees of pitch and roll to which the lift is being subjected and stores all the data for long-term safety monitoring.

Meanwhile, the new Awarelight system provides a visual indicator that Henriksen says has been developed to overcome the communication problems that many crane operators can encounter when the boat is being lowered or lifted for a substantial distance. A bright LED light is positioned near the hook from where its beam is directed upward so that it is clearly visible to the crane operators, but does not disturb the vision of those on the boat, and emits a series of constant and flashing light to signal when it’s safe to begin the lifting process, unload and complete.

By Rachael Doyle