The title sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Well for the past month or so in Cork Harbour we have been following the story of the Three Cranes – not the long legged long necked ones like this, but the actual metal structures used to lift heavy objects – in this case very heavy objects, each crane is 100 metres high and they weigh about 1 000 tonnes each!
The cranes on board the Albatross
These cranes were manufactured in the Liebherr factory in County Kerry, brought in pieces to Cork Harbour, and then assembled in the Verolme Dockyard in Cork. The final destination of these cranes is Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, a distance of approx 4970 nautical miles – not a journey to be undertaken lightly!
To get these cranes to their final destination, the very long, (265 metres) and very wide ship ‘The Albatross’ arrived in Cork a few weeks ago. According to the local newspaper “the ship was originally designed as an oil tanker and converted to a crane carrier. The ship is designed to carry a very large volume of ballast in the lower ballast tanks to counteract the weight of the cranes on deck.” That is good to know, given the height and weight of the present cargo!
The journey across the Atlantic will take over two weeks, I don’t think I would enjoy being on board in a heavy storm, as can happen at this time of year, I hope the ship is not too top heavy in strong winds. The departure from Cork was delayed by 12 hours, as there were some high winds last Sunday afternoon when it was due to depart, but the ship did get away next morning on the high tide.
You can read more about the story here and here.
Linked to Daily Prompt : Nervous
