Blue Marlin is Back in Business
After undergoing a major conversion at South Korea’s Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD), the world’s largest semi-submersible heavy lift vessel, Blue Marlin, has entered service. Owned jointly by Norway’s Jan-Erik Dyvi AS and Holland’s Dockwise Shipping and managed by Glasgow’s Anglo-Eastern, the 76,061 dwt vessel was built in 2000 by Taiwan’s China Shipbuilding Corp in Kaohsiung. Conversion work in Korea saw the vessel lengthened by 6m as well as having her breadth increased by over 21 m to 63 m to provide an unobstructed cargo deck area of 11,227 m².
The conversion of Blue Marlin has been undertaken to allow the vessel to transport some of the world’s largest floating oil platforms and drilling platforms, as well as semi-submersibles. The vessel’s first contract since her successful conversion was an unusual one; the transport of the Vietnamese owned 13,200 tonne semi-submersible production platform Dai Hung I from an offshore location in the Far East to the Hyundai-Vinashin Shipyard in Nah Trang, Vietnam. On arrival, Blue Marlin acted as a floating drydock while Hyundai-Vinashin carried out repairs to the semi-submersible, as the yard’s existing drydocks were all occupied at the time!
Meanwhile, the 29,000 grt product carrier Jeanette has returned to Korea for repairs after being in collision with the 12,471 grt containership Fesco Voyager while on her delivery voyage from Ulsan, Korea to Qingdao, China. The tanker has returned to Hyundai Mipo Dockyard in Ulsan and is alongside for permanent repairs to her damaged starboard side shell plating. Repairs have yet to start and are expected to take four weeks to complete.
