Do you think they SAURUS?

The #dlr_blog is focused on events happening around the North Woolwich area of London’s Royal Docks in Newham and for the last three years there have been summer community festivals that have included various public art performances that started with a ship.

This year at the Ferry Festival we were lucky enough to have a visit from three Dinosaurs and their keeper!!

Their name is SAURUS and they are the creation of a Netherlands based theatre group called Close Act Theatre that specialise in street theatre productions. We were lucky to have the support of Stratford Circus Arts Centre and other supporters of the Ferry Festival that enabled the organisers to put on two free performances during the event.

Each of the SAURUS creatures stands about 5m tall and is 7m long and depending on the performance space between 3 and 12 SAURUS’s can be deployed along with a number of other characters.

For the North Woolwich performances they were accompanied by the red costumed Dinosaur keeper – not sure whether it was her or the SAURUS creatures that were the most scary!!

There was one amusing moment when the dinosaur parade encountered a double-decker bus – I would have loved to have seen the look on the face of the person on the bus when the dinosaur looked in through the window!!!

A video of one of the performances can be seen below.

Check out the Ferry Festival Facebook page for more details and pictures of the overall festival.

A pier appears

It is not everyday that you get to see 600 tonnes of metal being lowered into the River Thames – yesterday down at Orchard Wharf was one of those rare occasions.

Urban Space Management that operate the Trinity Buoy Wharf complex in the Docklands area of East London were responsible for achieving this feat of engineering – along with the help of a few friends!!

The item in question will become a new river pier at Trinity Buoy Wharf, initially as the new operating base for the Thames Clipper fleet (who are already based at TBW) and ultimately as passenger pier for ferry services.

Unusually the pier was constructed on site at Orchard Wharf and then needed to be lowered in to the Thames by crane – more often new piers are constructed off site and then moved up river by tug.

Weldex Crane Hire deployed one of their large crawler cranes to the site to lift the new pier in to the river where JUMBO and HAVEN SUPPORTER were on hand to ensure it didn’t float away!!

As always these operations are undertaken in stages to ensure all is in order and all the preparatory checks had been completed the lift began and the pier took to the air.

The crane then had to move forwards with the load suspended in the air to ensure the pier cleared the river bank.

Then it was slowly lowered into the water and then was secured in place (once it was made sure it wasn’t going to sink!!).

Then the tugs moved in to position to take the new pier down to the King George V Dock where the pier will be balanced before it returns to Trinity Buoy Wharf.

It was quite amusing to watch the waiting support vessels whilst the lift was underway – almost like circling sharks waiting for something to go wrong!!

The White Swan in West India Dock

For the past four days South Quay in West India Dock has been the temporary home to the Brazilian Navy’s sail training ship Cisco Branco (White Swan).

She is paying her first visit to London but has been a regular visitor to European waters since she was launched in the Netherlands back in 1999.

She has been taking part in the recent Tall Ships Racing series in the Baltic (an event won by the TS Royalist) and is making various port calls as she heads back to her homeport in Rio.

As a sail training ship she is used as a floating classroom for naval cadets as well as acting as a goodwill ambassador.

She is a a sleek ship constructed from steel but with wood and brass fittings to give her the characteristic look of a sailing ship but using modern designs and materials. She is also quite a bit smaller than the BAP Union which had visited West India Dock a few weeks before.

The crew were very friendly and very happy to show visitors around their fine vessel and they had been enjoying the sights of London.

A short video from onboard can be seen here and further pictures can be seen here.

Flying machines in KGV Dock

The waters of the King George V Dock in North Woolwich are usually pretty quiet with only the occasional tug or boat passing through but for one afternoon a year they become an international sporting arena.

This is when the European Freestyle Jet Ski Championship arrives in Newham to host a round of the competition in the UK by setting up camp at the Tereza Joanne boat floating venue in London’s Docklands.

Over the course of the 5 hour event there were qualifying and finals for each of 4 experience or power categories and a best trick category with men and women, young and not so young, competitors from across the world taking part.

The event generated a range of freestyle moves and some trills and spills as looping or barrel rolling a jet ski doesn’t always quite work as planned!!

Overall an entertaining afternoon in the sun watching the competitors going through their paces.

Unfortunately the event wasn’t that well promoted and most of the spectators appeared to be family and friends of the competitors  – a real shame that RoDMA, Newham Council nor the local press appeared to promote the event and this has to raise doubts about the event returning in future years.

Giants in the Royal Docks

The ExCel exhibition centre sits on the dockside of Royal Victoria Dock and hosts a wide range of events and a few of these each year have a maritime theme and occasionally these events attract visiting vessels to the Royal Docks.

One such event was the recent Offshore Wind Energy 2017 show. Whilst the event only attracted two visiting vessels that were part of the exhibition they were certainly difficult to miss and were an impressive sight both in the KGV Lock and also in Royal Victoria Dock – a shame the waters of the Royals are not graced with more visiting ships.

The two vessels in question were both examples of Offshore Support Vessels (OSVs) that help service windfarm installation projects by providing floating hotels for construction workers.

The Atlantic Enterprise was built in 1970 and has had several names and roles prior to being converted for the Offshore support role. She measures just over 82m in length with a breadth of 21m and weighs in around 6400t.

In contrast the Siem Moxie was built in 2014 specifically for the role. She measures just over 74m in length with a breadth of 17m and weighs in around 2800t.

As is often the case with events at ExCel a couple of London based vessels also visited the Royal Docks to host corporate entertainment events for delegates. On this occasion both Moon Clipper and the Silver Sturgeon provided the transport.

Hopefully there will be some more exhibition related vessels visiting the Royal Docks in the near future – keep posted on expected visitors here.

Treble tug tow through KGV Lock

After all the excitement surrounding the arrival of the floating hotel it was time for the more mundane but no less interesting task of putting the toys back in their box and when this involves moving a barge that is  91.4m long and 27.4m wide through a lock that is only 30.5m wide there is not a lot of margin for error!

The first attempt at the move saw Rederij Groen’s tug Dutch Blue (that had brought the barge over with the hotel on it) and Kotug Smit’s ZP Bear transit through the Lock and out to the barge which was moored in the KGV Dock alongside North Woolwich.

The following video shows the tugs leaving the lock.

However, the circumstances were not quite right for the operation to go ahead and so a 24 hour delay was put in place.

The next day ZP Bear returned and was accompanied by MST’s tug Protector.

After turning the barge around in the dock the tugs were then ready to head in to the lock.

The following video shows the various stages of the move from the entry in to the lock through to the departure in to the river Thames.

Then they were safely out in to the river where, after a pause to ensure that everything was ready for a North Sea tow, the convoy headed off down the Thames at the end of a busy few days on a project that had involved 8 tugs from 5 different companies as well as PLA pilots and the RoDMA Marine Operations Team among others.