PMG were awarded the contract to remove a 28m timber ketch from the Ross River in Townsville. The vessel had sunk at its moorings 11 months previous.
PMG's job was to remove the vessel from Qld Coastal Waters. The casualty weighed more than the 2 largest cranes available locally could lift, so we had to come up with an alternative plan to getting the vessel completely out of the water and up onto dry land, once she had been raised. The solution ended up being getting an old disused slipway that was in the vicinity operational again. This involved a lot of work to the rails and winch, but was all done in-house and worked very well.
The actual raising of the casualty was a challenge in itself, as the vessel was in extremely poor condition with very real possibility of breaking up during the raising, but with a lot of pre-job design and engineering completed, an extremely efficient methodology was implemented. This involved a full steel skeletal frame over the outside of the casualty, which held 2T lift bags deep below the water, allowing efficient lift to be gained once the bags were inflated. The frame allowed the raising load to be put through the frame, rather than into the weakened timber vessel. Supporting the project were our 45 x 15m barge PMG150, 150T crawler crane, Tug Sailfish and a skilled dive and construction and marine crew led by Project Manager Col Wood.
This project once again demonstrated PMG's ability to perform very complex tasks with the right sized equipment, right people, and correct pre-site engineering and project planning completed. All this leads to a successful project and a happy client.
