Shiprepair & Maintenance: September 2020
Hydrex says the continuing need for underwater services has been illustrated by the high number of callouts for its repair teams across Europe during the last few weeks.
Notably, the company responded to, and simultaneously completed, bow thruster and stern tube repair works on a 300m container ship while the vessel was docked in Algeciras, Spain. Hydrex divers reinstalled the ship’s bow thruster unit, which had been previously removed, allowing the ship to depart for Spain without any delays due to thruster overhauling.
Upon its arrival in Algeciras, the repaired thruster unit was installed by the Hydrex team using the company’s flexible mobdock, while technicians also removed and replaced the ship’s leaking stern tube gasket, thereby preventing the need for additional drydocking.
Meanwhile, Hydrex technicians removed six effected sections of the port and starboard side deformed bilgekeels from a 249m oil tanker anchored at Frederikshawn, Denmark. For the operation, resources and employees were transported to the ship’s location in a company van. Hydrex states that its fast response centre is stocked with a wide range of equipment as well as a fleet of trucks, vans and dive support vessels, which allows the company to mobilise for operations such as this and provide the necessary materials quickly.
In Antwerp, Hydrex installed a new ropeguard on a 214m ro-ro vessel, which a team of the company’s divers had discovered missing during a previous stern tube seal assembly inspection earlier this year. The replacement ropeguard was prepared for installation during a preliminary underwater inspection of the stern tube seal assembly, then lowered into the water, positioned and secured by company divers.
Elsewhere, Hydrex divers in Rotterdam installed blanks on five scrubber overboard pipes of a containership, allowing for internal repair work to be carried out while the vessel was sailing. The ship later returned to Rotterdam where a Hydrex team was again mobilised and removed the aforementioned blanks.
