Sailing for over a decade, might lull you into thinking that you've pretty much seen everything that there is to see. But the other day when the ship went to Corpus Christi, I came across the above scene, and the first thing to cross my mind was a sympathetic thought for the brother captain of mine who must have been on that ship when it broke into two.
But as it turned out a couple of days later, when I passed that way again, the vessel was floating happily around in its berth, with a huge oil rig strangely impaled on it. As it turned out, the vessel Talisman, is probably one of the handful of vessels built for the express purpose of transporting oil rigs. As per what I was told by the pilot, the vessel doesn't really break into two, but is in fact an submersible vessel that enables the main deck to sink some meters below the water. In the middle of the deck is a huge hole, like a well and it is in this hole over which the oil rig is bought over and placed for the long trip over to its drilling position.
A bit of research shows that the Talisman is a 1993 built vessel classed as a Heavy load carrier and is registered in the Netherland Antilles. A place where I was a lot if you go back on the blog. Also it actually has five more sister ships in operation around the world, built in the same shipyard from 1989 to 1993. Its a neat contraption and the first time I've ever seen something like this. The Pilot explained that the oil rig is being shipped off to Argentina. Well, smooth sailing to you guys!
1 comment:
Wow, I had no idea that such ships existed or were even possible. Amazing Technology!
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