Semi-Submersible Heavy Transport Vessels

August 26, 2016 11:31 AM

Need to move a ship? Or several ships? Try a Float-In/Float-Off Heavy Transport Vessel.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter (23 comments total)

Your momma so fat, she....


nevermind
posted by blue_beetle at 11:39 AM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can't seem to find the "Buy Now With 1 Click" button on that last link.

I love stuff like this. Huge stuff. Huge ships, huge excavators, huge planes. That's what I loved about visiting the space center down in Florida. Everything was huge.
posted by bondcliff at 11:42 AM on August 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ah, the ship-shipping ship shipping shipping ships.
posted by MikeKD at 11:47 AM on August 26, 2016 [20 favorites]

I mean, would you just look at this.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:52 AM on August 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

How do they unstack the cargo ships from the barges after they get tugged away from the Blue Marlin? That's what I want to know.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:20 PM on August 26, 2016

If the ship-shipping ship sinks, the crew has plenty of lifeboats!
posted by TedW at 12:27 PM on August 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Rrrrrrrreally big cranes would be my guess, tobascodagama. Unfortunately it's hard to do an image search for "crane lifting cargo ship" without just getting a zillion images of cranes lifting cargo containers off of ships.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:50 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

MikeKD beat me to it, but yeah, this FPP is the ship-shipping ship shipping shipping ships meme, in expanded form and with backstory.
posted by mosk at 12:53 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Giant cranes is sort of obvious, but what I'm wondering is how you lift the boat without snapping its keel in half. Very carefully, I guess?
posted by tobascodagama at 1:55 PM on August 26, 2016

Well you probably put some slings under it and lift it from below, spreading the weight over several slings, but I imagine there is a lot of math involved in making sure that the ship doesn't fall apart like it's made of Lego, yeah.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:05 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

"we're gonna need a bigger... no,... actually I think this one will do."
posted by merocet at 2:13 PM on August 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

I live 30 metres above ground level with a view of the port of Rotterdam. I've seen the Thialf and Saipem 7000 so often this just makes me go “Meh, another big boat.”
Which is kinda sad because It makes me realize I'm jaded about stuff that's essentially still awesome.
posted by farlukar at 2:27 PM on August 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sirrah, there is a ship upon your ship. Please bear yourself in a more nautically dignified manner. Harrumph.

Seriously though, this blows my mind. Being a landlubber, I don't easily intuit that one big heavy ship could sit on another big heavy ship...and then still be able to travel around the world. Amazing feats of nautical engineering (and likely piloting etc...)
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:28 PM on August 26, 2016

Here's my favorite nearly impossible to grasp impossibly large grasper: The Versabar. (that is an oil platform in its claw)
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 4:03 PM on August 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

I always heard that a boat was a vessel you could carry on a ship, and a ship was a vessel that could carry a boat, but now I don't know what to believe.
posted by ckape at 4:18 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you have a big enough ship, everything else is a boat.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:39 PM on August 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm surprised that the baby ships are strong enough to survive being stacked 3 or 4 high on the shipping ship. Who needs that many identical baby ships anyway?
posted by monotreme at 4:41 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This was my life for 20 years. Both float on / float off and lift on / lift off. It's all pretty impressive.
But for the real wow factor try something like this .
The animation here explains it well. Amada Intrepid is one of the largest lifts so far about 60,000 tons.
posted by adamvasco at 5:06 PM on August 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Metaboater.
posted by carter at 5:31 PM on August 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Blue Marlin is painted orange. That can't be right, surely?
posted by Paul Slade at 11:08 AM on August 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's just been feeling kinda blue lately, is all.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:10 PM on August 27, 2016

A bit more about Vanguard; her capacity is to lift 117,000 metric tons and her owners are planning a bigger vessel.
posted by adamvasco at 2:21 PM on August 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Of course they need a bigger one. How else are they gonna ship Vanguard around?
posted by tobascodagama at 4:20 PM on August 29, 2016