September 30 - BigLift Shipping's Happy Sky has completed the discharge of two large ship-to-shore (STS) container cranes in Vigo, Spain.
The cranes were originally stationed at ECT's terminal in Rotterdam. Last year, the cranes were sold to Davila Group and will now be put to work at the Termavi container terminal.
Each crane measured 60 m high, 96 m wide and 15.25 m between the rails. The weight of each crane was in excess of 800 tonnes. During transport, the huge units overhung Happy Sky by 58 m in total - 40 m on the portside and 18 m on the starboard side.
The engineers of both BigLift and client Altius meticulously prepared for this project. As these cranes are not designed to be transported by sea, it was necessary to reinforce them to withstand the accelerations and forces occurring during a sea voyage. A total of 80 tonnes of additional steel was fitted to each crane to strengthen it.
As the cranes' centre of gravity is very high, the lifting operation required cranes with a sufficient lifting height, which was provided by Happy Star's two 900-tonne capacity mast cranes.
In order to spread the forces on the vessel's deck, load spreaders were positioned on the weather deck. After lifting the first container crane on board it was skidded over pre-installed rails to its stowage position aft. The vessel's cranes positioned the second container crane directly in its stowage position.
