Marine airbags -Interview with Evergreen Maritime (3)

What was the most challenging mission your system has assisted with?

The most challenging mission we ever participated is the ancient ship named “Nanhai No.1” salvage project. That salvage project is called the most complicated and expensive one in China history.

The salvage project had been revised for 6 times and been demonstrated for 4 times during the preparing 4 years. At June 2006, the top 22 experts were collected to demonstrate the latest project which got approved after two days discussion. The spirit of salvage project is to build a large caisson to contain the ship and its surrounding then lift the caisson out of water and land by marine airbags.

The Nanhai No.1, weighs 2,800 tons under the water. When brought out of water, it will weigh some 4,800 tons. The caisson was brought out water and placed on a submerged barge then carried to a temporary port. All we need to do with marine airbags is land the caisson from the barge and move it to its final residence, a specially built museum named "crystal palace". The tides and droping off weights along with the caisson move to land make the barge’s working height and directions changed every time. We have to adjust the inner pressure of marine airbags placed under the saisson to redirect caisson to close the port or change the height of caisson bottom to reach the better condition for landing. On 12/25/2007 The first attempt to land the caisson was cancelled because of the violent wave when the caisson near the port 4 meters. During the next day’s floodtime, It took more than 3 hours to land the caisson on the temporary port successfully with 16 huge air bags. The left 365 meters from the temporary port to museum is comparative easier for air bag to carry the caisson to make it. On 12/28/2007, the caisson arrived its new home "crystal palace"and the mission of our company finished.

Experts said there were four cutting-edge tools ensure the success of this salavge project ,Evergreen marine airbag was one of them. Marine Airbag can offer the best protection to the ancient ship held in the caisson during the process of land and transportation. Its safety and flexibility was highly praised by experts and officers.

Is your company working on any new ideas for the future?

Yes. As we mentioned before ,marine airbag ship launching technology can not be used for ship side-launch now. We are working hard on improvement of marine airbags and new project designing for ship side-launch with marine airbags. We have two aims to achieve in the near future: one is enable ship side-launch with marine air bags,another one is to launch the DWT 100,000 ships with marine air bags.

How can we learn more about the product?
We think our website :http://www.evergreen-maritime.com is a good way to learn more about marine airbags. We have plenty of airbag ship launching/salavge cases presented in our website which are helpful for people to know about the product.