BigLift Shipping’s Happy Star was recently in action moving two identical Continuous Ship Unloaders (CSUs) from Masan in South Korea to Cilegon in Indonesia. Each machine weighs 1492 mt and was constructed for the Jawa 9 and Jawa 10 power plants that are being built by Indo Raya Tenega.

Project Cargo Journal briefly reported on the move which saw Happy Star ship the CSUs in two identical voyages. Both were loaded in a tandem lift operation, which means that Happy Star’s own two cranes connect on either side of the crane and lift the construction on board together.

The company provided further detail on the operation in its latest BigNews magazine. Once landed on Happy Star’s weather deck, the CSU moved back eight metres under its own power, to make space to turn the boom. Then the bucket elevator boom and the counterweight boom could be landed on the specially made towers, which had been welded to the weatherdeck in advance. The main body of the CSU was then seafastened to the deck with eight specially designed push-pull braces.

The loading operation took three days to complete and discharging the cargo required two days. After the second delivery, the towers and rails on the deck needed to be removed again, which took another two days, BigLift said.

A special issue here was that the Doosan Dock in Masan is a small private quay where Happy Star had to back in with only five metres to spare. The quay was also quite short: Happy Star still stuck out 50 metres. No vessel needing stability pontoons for such cargoes would have been able to perform these lifts, simply because there would not have been space for the pontoon. On the other end of the voyage, the discharge quay in Cilegon is still so new that Happy Star was the first vessel ever to have berthed there.