Solitaire

Yesterday I went with a group of students and teachers to the Solitaire. This is a ship from the company Allseas wich is specialised in laying pipes on the seabed. These pipes are upto 60 inch in diameter (!) and can be laid to a dept of 2700 m! The ship is in fact one big pipe welding factory wich welds sections of 12m into one big pipe that slides of the stern of the ship and is held by big tensioners wich can tow 3x300 metric tons. Quite an extruder in a way...

The pipe makes a S-shaped curve and lands on the seabed. It's as easy as that ;)

http://www.allseas.com/uk/20/equipment/solitaire.html

The ship was in a dok in the Rotterdam harbor for major maintenance and we had permission to fotograph anything we wanted during the tour trough the entire ship. Briljant! Underneeth a couple of shots to give an impression.

Start of the main firing line in the bow.

End of the main firing line in the stern with a view on the stinger

The main firing line goes over the length of the whole ship (300 m) and consists of a line-up station, 5 welding stations, 3 tensioners, a none destructive test station and a seeling station.

The stinger guides the pipe into the first S-bend and extends the ship with 150 m.

A 'small' pipe in an opened tensioner. The pipe is covered in concrete to make it sink and to protect it.

A view from the aftbridge. In the back you can see the stinger. The crane (one of two) on the right is used to hoist pipes on board. The ship is almost constantly resuplied wit new pipes while at sea. There are two bridges, one for normal sailing and one for pipelaying.