Blue Marlin, the huge ship built to transport ships and even oil platforms

There are ships to transport passengers, containers, cars or gas and then there is the Blue Marlin, designed, simply, to move other boats. And that among a surprising list of mega-structures that include everything from platforms for oil exploitation to huge barges. It sounds crazy, but it is the task for which they have designed it: to cross the oceans with huge structures loaded on its “back”, such as the hull of the aircraft carrier HMAS Adelaide that uploaded in 2013 in the waters of the Ría de Vigo to move it later to Australia.

Muscle has to do it. Your manager’s fileBoskalis, Dutch company owner since 2013 of Dockwise —a reference in heavy maritime transport— impresses.

The ship presents a length 224.8 meters, measures 63 m wide and reaches a draft of 13.3 which can be extended to 28.4 when submerged. Its wide deck around 11,200 square meters (178.2×63 m) and allows it to reach a dead weight of over 70,000 tons. With the cargo on board, the Marlin Blue can travel at a cruising speed of around 13 knots.

Not suitable for puny ships

The most surprising thing about the boats is probably not its size or speed, but how it manages to transport weights greater than the caliber of the Adelaide or the ALHD Canberra. Because the Blue Marlin does not drag. His work is more complex: fit your load on its wide deck.

The key to the Blue Marlin is its design, which places it in the category of ships semi-submersible heavy lift (flo-flo, float-on float-off) and allow it to work in a peculiar way to facilitate stowage.

Basically the semi-submersibles heavy lift fill their tanks with ballast to stay partially submerged and that the tasks of loading on its enormous deck are easier. In your technical sheet It is explained that it incorporates, among other equipment, four main ballast bombs.

Picture of the Black Marlin.

That’s how it loaded in December 2013 the Adelaide in the waters of the Rías Baixas, a complex operation that required the assistance of mooring operators, pilots and tugboats, among other personnel. The ship submerged part of her broad deck, positioned Adelaide, and then refloated. To ensure that the huge structure was well fixed, she was made a “bed” of iron and wood.

The Adeliade’s is only one of his many feats with heavy loads. In the cover photo can be seen in 2006 entering Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after completing a long voyage from Texas to relocate a platform with Sea Based X-Band Radar (SBX). Another structure you have dealt with is part of the oil rig thunderhorse, of 59,500 tons.

The Blue Marlin is not the only semi-submersible heay lifta concept, As Va de Barcos points out, which goes back decades and includes other classes, such as the Ocean Servant or Super Servant. Blue isn’t the only one in his family either. In its Boskalis fleet it also includes the White Marlin (72,000 tons) and Black Marlin (57,200 tons), all oriented to the transport of heavy loads.

The ship was manufactured at the facilities of Chinese Shipbuilding Corporation Located in Taiwan in 2000 —the year that appears on its file— and it was remodeled some time later in South Korea. Now he sails the oceans turned into a true strongman of the seasa category that leaves other prodigies of naval engineering, such as the impressive construction ship in the high seas Pioneering Spirit.

Images: Marion Doss (Flickr), Boskalis, Sam Churchill (Flickr), Kees Torn (Flickr), Counting Stars (Flickr) Y US Missile Defense Agency