Cruise ship Carnival Vista loaded on BOKA Vanguard

Cruise ship Carnival Vista loaded on BOKA Vanguard of Bos & Kalis.

Last Saturday, July 13, the 300-meter-long “Carnival Vista” cruise ship was loaded on the heavy load carrier BOKA Vanguard of Dutch Bos & Kalis and then transported to the Grand Bahama Shipyard in Freeport in the Bahamas for a unique dry dock operation. The loading operation including driving up the BOKA Vanguard lasted 12 hours.

The cruise ship was loaded on the BOKA Vanguard a few kilometers off the coast of Freeport. At the Grand Bahama Shipyard, work is being carried out on the Carnival Vista from Carnival Cruise Line and will be released before July 27 for the next cruise trip from Galveston in the United States.

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11 posts were split to a new topic: Azipod Use and Development

The title is so misleading. How using the semi submersible as a dry dock salvage. I believe I have seen semi submersible used for thruster repair on drill rig.

This is impressive just on the size of both vessels.

You are right, HLVs and semi-submersible barges have been used to dry dock both ships and rigs before.

Usually you have to remove at least two thrusters from MODUs before loading them on semi-submersible HLVs. The thrusters are not retractable and very few HLVs are able to submerge enough to float over with thrusters installed.

PS> Azimuth thrusters used on MODUs are able to be removed and reinstalled while afloat. Commonly done both for repairs and to allow berthing at shallow berths, dry docking and loadout.

Yes, the thread title is largely misleading; there never was ‘salvage’. It could be titled ‘…dry-docked on BOKO Vanguard’

The big floating dry-dock at Freeport is still not working, since a dock’s crane fell on a cruise-ship earlier this year. The Carnival Vista finished her last cruise at Galveston and then went to Freeport, all at reduced speed. BOKO Vanguard came over the Atlantic from Europe, and the spare parts were transported to Freeport.

Historic:
An earlier project with the (then) ‘Dockwise Vanguard’ was to transport the wreck of the Costa Concordia to a ship breaker, this with the two rows of sponsons along Concordia’s hull.
Literally, the Concordia was not refloated; the whole was a sort of catamaran with the sponsons as hulls and the Concordia hanging between them as ‘cargo’.

This was a real Italian Opera Buffa: From the beginning, the authorities insisted on ‘no breaking on Giglio Island’; only the hard-blocked rudders and the propellers were removed at Giglio, to facilitate the towing. From there on, the up righting and the sponsons where mandatory.

There are few ports in Italy, which could allow the wreck’s draft of 18.5 meters; Palermo and Taranto refused to block their deepwater berths for the years to come.
The Toscana Region (where Giglio Island is part of) insisted to do the breaking in the Toscana. They proposed to drag a 10 miles channel to the tiny port of Piombino, and to extend the port… Carnival paying…

Then all was blocked. Toscana had no right to decide on the breaking yard, but could always stop the works at Giglio Island. Italy would not allow the wreck’s planned destination of South-Asia….

Finally, they sorted out a transfer to the westerly Container Port of Genoa (the old port, with the dry-docks, had not the necessary depth). At the container port, they emptied the Concordia and removed some decks. Then, they towed her to the old port, removed other things, and put her into the drydock.

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The transport of Costa Concordia on Dockwise Vanguard was planned but never executed:
https://gcaptain.com/dockwise-vanguard-to-lift-costa-concordia-from-giglio/
The wreck was eventually towed, floating on the sponsons, to Genova for dismantling:

Yes, I did not clearly write that the project stayed project.

I don’t now how far the project Vanguard was pushed, or if it had only to put the Italians under pressure to stop the endless wars between their different administrations.
At least, it worked.

Off Freeport, ‘Boka Vanguard’ released the ‘Carnival Vista’ into the sea again.
Vista, after some tests and a return to Freeport, is now underway to her homeport Galveston TX.

They did not need all the time reserved for the works.
Therefore, on July 23, Carnival Vista will leave Galveston for an unscheduled 4-days cruise and, on July 27, she will resume her year-round one-week cruises.

Join the merchant navy and see the world. As a crew member, having to make those boring one week roundtrips all the time, I suppose that I soon would become a mental case…

Both major US cruise lines, Carnival and Royal Caribbean, have minority interests in ‘Grand Bahama Shipyard Ltd’ at Freeport.

After discharging ‘Carnival Vista’, ten days ago, ‘Boka Vanguard’ is still at anchor off Freeport. Maybe to let the crew have some holydays…?

More probably, Vanguard was booked for other cruise ship’s dry-docks (and had no other reserved works); the big floating dry-dock at Freeport being still out of service.

I doubt that crew rest is the reason.

They will normally not steam off to somewhere without a confirmed assignment. But the Americas are usually an offloading area, so they would likely be re-positioning for better prospects somewhere else.

She MAY be on a retainer for a future cruise ship docking, though.

The Bos & Kalis website does not mention anything about future plans. I think that they are waiting for orders or that they expect that a new job in that area will turn up soon. Enough azipods around…

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