Winter 2003

8
Spotlight on: NORDGULF
November 2002 saw the first ever docking of a NORD tanker when NORDISLE
(105,000 dwt, built in 1998) entered the Lisnave shipyard in Portugal for her
special survey drydocking, shortly followed by her sistervessel NORDLIGHT in
December. Next came our two LR2 Aframaxes, NORDSTRENGTH and
NORDMARK, conducted at the ASRY shipyard in Bahrain also in December 2002.
The Lisnave shipyard once again hosted a special survey drydocking for one of our
tankers, this time for NORDGULF, supervised by Superintendent John Price.
The drydocking of NORDGULF
The preparation for the drydocking
started many months in advance with
the technical department working on a
detailed drydock specification, which was sent to
the shipyards who were asked to quote for the
business. After analysing the quotes and looking
at price, facilities, quality of work, weather
conditions, deviation costs, off-hire time,
Lisnave, based in Setubal, Portugal was chosen.
En route to the shipyard various preparatory
work was carried out by the ship’s staff such as
tank cleaning and gas-freeing. As the
NORDGULF is a Crude Oil Carrier, this was a
major operation and additional men were put on
board the vessel to assist the ship’s staff. Tank
cleaning progressed 24 hours a day during the
trip from the US Gulf to Setubal.
Superintendent John Price joined the vessel on
arrival and ran
through the
drydocking plan
with Capt. Dobrev,
the Chief Engineer
and the shipyard
managers. He was
then joined by
Assistant Superintendent
Robert
“The A-Team”
Robert Jelcic & John Price
NORD NEWS Winter 2003
Jelcic, who
attended the
shipyard to obtain
valuable experience of a Tanker drydocking.
The vessel prepared her tanks at the tank
cleaning station first and then proceeded to the
dry dock.
Once NORDGULF had entered the drydock
and rested safely on the blocks, work on her hull
commenced. After two and a half days of
Cleaning and hydroblasting the ship’s hull
cleaning and blasting the hull, the ship was ready
for re-coating. New tin free anti-fouling paint
from two different manufacturers was applied to
the port and starboard parts of the under-water
hull, allowing us to compare the performance of
the products in the future.
A special project that was undertaken was the
coating of the propeller with a product called