Nawae Construction docked PNGs biggest barge in Alotau
admin:admin time:2016-02-23
The biggest barge in PNG was hauled to land by Nawae Construction LTD with marine airbags in middle of January 2016. The vessel , DB Ayios Georgios is one 94 x 23m fully equipped construction barge with crane, accommodation, office and workshop facilities owned by Nawae Construction, the premier marine & civil engineering company, operating in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It is the first time using airbags to dock vessels in PNG.
Eversafe Marine offered the complete service pack for this project, from equipment providing to on-site assistance. Eversafe Marine worked closely with Nawae Construction and developed one efficient docking plan which uses utmost of natural beach as the docking slipway. To satisfy the big pulling force requirement, bulldozer and excavator are deployed to work together with winches to haul the barge.
The natural beach is full of small stones, airbags have to roll on over them while carrying the weight. It is not the ideal condition in fact but good airbags can tolerate it in a way. The coordination of winch ,excavator and bulldozer is also a difficulty of the project,pulling angles and speeds of those different facilities must be controlled accurately.
The first two bags were inserted underneath barge bow at about 50 cm deep water. They crunched the gravel and rolled onto the ramp by the winch pulling. Then more airbags were added when barge was pulled further. Step by step the vessel came out of water completely. At last people placed support blocks and deflated airbags to rest barge on blocks.
Alotau is a peaceful and beautiful city. Different from Port Moresby, local people is polite and friendly, seldom badger foreigners. Using airbags to dock vessels is efficient and convenient, it is environment-friendly which is especially important nowadays. Good airbags have better design structure, they are tough can tolerate cutting ,abrasion to some extent, which is the guarantee of safety and success of projects.
