Repair and maintenance of Seago Antwerp container ship completed at Remontowa
Recently serviced Danish operated Seago Antwerp container ship was the longest one ever docked in Remontowa track record, the Company says in its press release. The ship was under the care of Remontowa for 21 days, of which 12 it spent in yard's largest dock no. 6. It is a nine years old vessel delivered from German PS Werften in Stralsund. The ship's deadweight capacity is 53 634 ton, while its overall length - 293.85 m and beam - 32.18 m. Danish flagged ship is operated by feeder and short sea shipping arm of Maersk Line - Seago Line.
Most of the shiprepair and maintenance works have been done, while the ship was in dock, including large amount of painting of hull. And there was plenty of surface to be covered with fresh coating, indeed - 12 thousand sq m of underwater hull and 5.5 thousand sq m of topsides. Before painting, the thorough cleaning and water sandblasting took place, followed by cleaning of the dock from material left after sandblasting.
The maintenance and painting works have been performed by the yard’s permanent partner from Remontowa Holding - Remontowa Coating & Equipment, supported by subcontractors.
The Owner decided to change the system of coating, aiming at improving the speed or reducing fuel consumption. The novel feature applied is a special anti-fouling coating. It has some kind of hydrophobic properties, so it reduces viscous (frictional) drag of a hull. Similar effect is achieved by application of the silicone coating.
The hull above waterline has had three layers of paint applied, while the underwater hull was further enhanced with special anti-fouling paint SeaQuantum. It is a modern, tin-free, self-polishing anti-fouling coating from Jotun. It fulfils the stringent IMO requirements regarding anti-foulings. And it promises speed gain of up to 20 percent comparing to fouled hull. The SeaQuantum is obviously not new to Remontowa, as other vessels have had it applied before.
Similarly to applying silicone, also with SeaQuantum special conditions of coating application have to be kept. They include dust free environment (thus thorough cleaning of the dock after water-sandblasting, to have virtually "sterile" dock) and surface temperature being not less than 3 ⁰C. Special precautions, to keep the environment dust-free, have been applied also during the painting procedure itself. Good ventilation has also had to be provided to facilitate proper drying of the coating. Depending on air circulation, environment temperature, thickness and number of coating layers the drying takes 3 up to 8 hours.
Almost very long, the ship is relatively slender. This left the gap of as many as 6 meters on each side to the dock walls. This eased the coating procedure. As mentioned before, this was the longest ship to be accommodated in Remontowa's largest dock so far. And why is this ship so slender and long? Its length is the result of the drive to increase the loading capacity, thus, the volume of hull, in panamax vessel, which theSeago Antwerp just is. The ship's beam constraint forces to increase length.
The ship also features a huge, 6-blade propeller - the largest one to be dismantled for repairs at Remontowa so far. The propeller, weighing 92 tons, has been dismantled, lowered and suspended to facilitate replacement of stern tube seal. Minor repairs have been performed on the propeller blades as well - removing of cavitation pits and repairing of notched propeller blades tips.
Large ship designed to achieve high speed, featuring large single propeller, must also have a large main engine. And again, the engine onboard Seago Antwerp, was the largest sized engine (although not the most powerful one) that Remontowa has ever serviced so far. It is one of the largest Sulzer designed engines. It features 1100 mm bore, its air cooler weighs 5 ton, while cylinder head, piston and cylinder liner weigh approximately 11 ton each. Therefore in the main engine, two overhead cranes with 12 ton SWL each are installed.
On Seago Antwerp, besides servicing of the main engine, also overhaul of two transverse thrusters (bow and stern thruster), replacement of steel structures in ballast tanks, load tests of overhead cranes, maintenance of anchors and anchor chains, checking of side and bottom valves have been performed.
The ship left the yard on October, 6. Arrival of the sister vessel, Seago Felixstowe, was scheduled for the second half of October.