Pioneering Spirit, the world\u2019s largest construction vessel, passed under Denmark\u2019s Great Belt Bridge on Tuesday, September 29, on its way to install two offshore substations for the Gennaker wind farm in the German Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ship is 1,253 feet (382 meters) long and 407 feet (124 meters) wide, according to Allseas\u2019 specification sheet. The East Bridge, the span ships pass under, has 213 feet (65 meters) of navigational clearance, according to its operator, Sund & B\u00e6lt, while Allseas lists the vessel\u2019s air draught as 57 meters (187 feet) when it sits 26 meters (85 feet) deep in the water. At its usual transit draught of 11.5 meters (37.7 feet) it rides much higher, so getting under the bridge means taking on ballast water and sinking lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allseas, the Swiss offshore contractor that owns the vessel, completed its first heavy-lift job with it in 2016, removing the Yme platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am very proud that \u2018Pioneering Spirit\u2019 has performed the Yme platform removal with technical perfection and that everything went exactly as planned,\u201d Allseas President Edward Heerema said at the time. \u201cOnce again, Allseas has proven itself to be a true pioneer of offshore engineering. From today, \u2018Pioneering Spirit\u2019 marks a new era in the heavy lifting industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking on water to sit lower is the same principle a floating dry dock uses when it sinks first so it can lift warships<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The vessel has two hulls split at the bow by a slot 122 meters (400 feet) long, where it takes in a whole platform. Allseas’ specification sheet says it is “Capable of lifting complete topsides up to 60,000 t and jackets up to 20,000 t.” A jacket is the steel frame a platform stands on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The steering comes from 12 azimuth thrusters, propellers in pods that can swing around, run by a dynamic positioning system supplied by Kongsberg Maritime. “The Pioneering Spirit’s multi-faceted role within installation, decommissioning and pipelay meant that it required the most comprehensive, reliable and feature rich DP and manoeuvring system available,” Jon Fredrik Lehn-Pedersen, a Kongsberg Maritime vice president, said in a 2016 company feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before heading to the Baltic for wind work, Pioneering Spirit spent years removing Shell\u2019s four Brent platforms from the North Sea. The last of them, the 31,000-tonne Brent Charlie topsides, came out in July 2024 in what Allseas called \u201cthe heaviest offshore lift ever performed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt started in 2013, with Shell\u2019s decision to award Allseas the contract for the engineering, preparation and removal of its four Brent platforms. The trust shown then in Allseas\u2019 technical expertise served as a milestone in the 20-year development of Pioneering Spirit,\u201d Heerema, by then Allseas\u2019 chairman, said after that lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This trip is for offshore wind. On its Gennaker West & East project page<\/a>, Allseas lists the “Transport & installation of 2 offshore substations with combined production capacity of +900 MW” for German grid operator 50Hertz, using a “Jacket lift system to install both topsides and jackets.” Allseas calls it the JLS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Offshore substations collect power from the turbines and step up the voltage, like the Chinese platform that sends offshore wind power to the grid<\/a> from the Yellow Sea. Allseas also lists a “First-time installation of ‘suction bucket’ jackets,” foundations that sit on wide steel buckets pressed into the seabed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ship got the tool for this job in 2022, when Allseas used its jacket lift system for the first time to remove the 8,100-tonne Ninian Northern jacket from the North Sea. \u201cWith the successful removal of the Ninian Northern jacket, Allseas has realised its long-term vision of a vessel that provides the offshore industry with a total solution for offshore work,\u201d Heerema said then.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBuilt to lift whole platforms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From the North Sea to the Baltic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Two substations for a Baltic wind farm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n