Rescued from skewed distress
Before a magnificent panorama. The sailing ship Europa, built in 1911, is regularly serviced in a dry dock every southern winter. This year an incident occurred in Cape Town which the South African specialist company Vanguard managed to rectify around two months later.
Since the year 2000 the sailing ship Europa has regularly ridden the waves of the world’s seven seas. Another crossing is currently planned to take place from Cape Town (South Africa) to Montevideo (Uruguay) from 29 September to 12 November. Interested and solvent leisure sailors can take part.
The ship, which can plough through the oceans with an angle of inclination of up to 65°, is helpless when it gets into such an inclined position on land, however – as happened on 20 May, when the 56 m long, 7.4 m wide and 33 m high ship tipped to the side during the course of its annual maintenance in a shipyard on Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred waterfront.
A sailor was injured in the uncontrolled manoeuvre of the 650 t ship, but he was able to leave the hospital at the beginning of June.
After the ship was once again stabilised the specialist Vanguard, founded in 1974, was contracted by Resolve Marine to design and carry out the righting operation to reorient the Europa to the centre-line of the dock’s rail system.
Due to the limited working area around the vessel, using a standard crane lift was out of the question, so Vanguard’s engineering team came up with a bespoke lifting solution. It consisted of four hydraulic gantry systems, which were positioned above the ship and between the masts – to keep the further impact on the masts and rigging as small as possible.
After the lifting systems, with a load capacity of 400 t and 600 t, were installed at the bow and another one with a load capacity of 500 t at the stern, the head beams were lifted into position and four strand jacks with a load capacity of 186 t were installed.
After lifting the ship was realigned
The strand jack system, which was mounted on keel brackets specially made for this mission, ensured accuracy and enabled the Vanguard team to erect the Europa in a controlled and precise manner on 25 July. After the vertical lift was completed, a transverse pushing process took place, which realigned the ship with the rail system. “The expert design and engineering work involved is evident in the precision of the execution,” Vanguard director Bryan Hodgkinson underlined.