Page 55: of Marine News Magazine (May 2014)

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house Z drive repair capabilities turns our client’s repair around rapidly, getting them back to work in just days.”

High blocking, as it turns out, has its origins in SSR’s early Navy work. The procedure came out of the need to block Navy frigates with a steep dead rise. The frigate beams are made out of steel on a triangular setting and set at the turn of the bilge for hull stability. Depending on overall height needed, steel beams are set below and wood blocks on top of the structure. On centerline there are two stacked four foot blocking arrangements with elevated beams between and wood blocking atop of the concrete.

This is dependent upon required height.

Mayhall explains further, “I don’t know that Signal Ship

Repair pioneered high blocking, but certainly, we take ad- vantage of it. Only later did we use this method for dry docking commercial vessels that needed the high blocking (up to 12 feet/3m) for drop down thruster and Z-drive re- pair.” And, in the past two years alone, SSR has performed the high blocking technique for as many as 18 different vessels. Operators taking advantage of SSR’s expedited ser- vices include Transocean, Hornbeck Offshore, Olympic

Shipping, Eidesvik, Dutra Construction, Express Marine,

Signet and Seabulk Towing; just to name a few.

SSR fi ne-tuned the practice way back in 2010. Mayhall says, “We did a major maintenance and repair upgrade to our Panamax Dry Dock 1, taking it out of service for 90 days. During that period we deep dredged under the dry dock to accommodate the drillship DEEPWATER NAVI-

GATOR for an upcoming dry dock period. The docking requirement was 12 foot blocking. The 550 foot drillship would draw 30 feet of water when coming into the dry dock. The high blocking was necessary to remove and re- pair the 12 drop down and fi xed Z-drives and thrusters as well as paint and underwater steel repair.

Time & Money = Oil & Gas

Like everything else in the maritime industry, minimal out of service time is paramount in the oilfi eld. Every day saved on a docking evolution can mean huge money to operators. Steven Lee, Equipment Manager at The Dutra

Group said in April, “We have taken advantage of Signal’s high blocking capabilities three times in the past twelve months. On the dredge Columbia it was extremely helpful with hopper door repairs to have height for removals. On our dump scow CK7 being blocked at seven feet made it so much more effi cient working on the seals on the split hop- per. We believe that Signal Ship Repair was able to stay on schedule and reduce overall time in the shipyard being able

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