COSCO Shipping Company Ltd. (COSCOL) has cut steel on a new semi-submersible heavy lift vessel that once completed will compete head-to-head with the world's most capable heavy lift ship, Dockwise Vanguard. The ship, named Guang Hua Kou, is being constructed by Guangzhou Shipyard International in China with delivery expected for Q4 2016. The 90,000 DWT, purpose-built … [Read more...]
Billionaires Emulating Jules Verne Take Submarines to Sea Depths
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The strange contraption slowly being assembled in a modest industrial shed in Breda, a small city in the Netherlands, bears little resemblance to Nautilus, the fictional submarine of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” It consists of a giant acrylic bubble bolted to a black, tubular steel frame and bracketed by yellow … [Read more...]
China to Dive for Buried Treasures; Submersible Is Set to Hunt for Valuable Minerals in Pacific
BEIJING—China plans an ultradeep dive by a manned submersible beneath the Pacific that would propel it past the U.S. in a race to explore potentially vast mineral resources in the deepest parts of the world's oceans. The Jiaolong—named after a mythical sea-dragon—left China on board an oceanographic research ship on July 1. It arrived on Saturday at its … [Read more...]
Manned submersible “Alvin” to receive major upgrades
Alvin, the manned submersible perhaps most famous for such exploits as locating a lost H-bomb in the Mediterranean Sea in 1966, exploring the first known hydrothermal vent sites in the 1970s, and of course surveying the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1986, is to be withdrawn from service this week to undergo a two-phase, $40m renovation - the biggest retrofit of its 40+ year … [Read more...]
FPSO Delivery Photos – Heavy Lift Transport
FPSO delivery photos from the gCaptain archives... enjoy! Ever wonder how a huge FPSO is delivered to it's destination? Shipspotting forum points us to Seven Marine's photos of a recent heavy lift operation: The FPSO Sevan Voyageur left Yantai Raffles Shipyard in China this morning. The FPSO is placed onboard a dry tow vessel and is on its way to the Keppel Verolme shipyard … [Read more...]