In 2010, HEGER was hired by Atlantic Marine, Mobile (Now Alabama Shipyard), to develop a plan to dry dock the 32,000 ton drill ship DEEPWATER PATHFINDER on their 46,000 ton floating dock. The vessel had six large thrusters that hung below baseline by 5.5 meters. Normally the thrusters had to be removed in deep water prior to dry docking then reinstalled after undocking at great expense. HEGER worked with Atlantic Marine to develop a method for docking the ship on normal height blocks by overhanging the stern thrusters off the end of the dock and removing the forward thrusters while the vessel was still floating between the wing walls. The forward thrusters were lowered from the vessel and hung from cantilever beams extending off the forward end of the dry dock’s pontoon.
The PATHFINDER was successfully docked in 2010 and thrusters were removed and reinstalled according to plan.
