Kuehne+Nagel delivers the largest floating drydock ever built in Türkiye to the USA

“We had checklists. Then we had checklists for the checklists: every smallest detail accounted for, nothing left to chance,” begins Aliye Erkan Bıyık, National Project Logistics Manager at Kuehne+Nagel, based in Istanbul, Türkiye.

And when the cargo weighs 17,300 tonnes, that kind of meticulous planning is essential. Every detail, every gram, every millimetre of rope can impact a project of this scale.

The reason for such vigilance? Nothing less than the largest floating drydock ever built in Türkiye.

Floating drydocks are U-shaped mobile structures used in the maritime industry to repair and maintain vessels, especially those with damage below the waterline. The advantage of floating drydocks is that they are not fixed in one place and can be moved to different locations for better accessibility. By submerging beneath a vessel and then deballasting, they lift ships out of the water for service. As most drydocks do not have engines, they must be towed to their designated locations.

Kuehne+Nagel was entrusted with the transport of this drydock by General Dynamics NASSCO, an American shipbuilding and repair company. The task sounded simple: move the floating drydock from the shipyard in Yalova, where it was built, to NASSCO’s shipyard in San Diego, USA.

“For our team, the project began the moment the mooring ropes securing the drydock to the dock were released," continues Aliye Erkan Bıyık. "Once freed, the drydock was towed by four tugboats into open waters, in preparation for loading onto a larger vessel that would carry it to its final destination, San Diego.”

Manoeuvring a 17,300-tonne drydock measuring over 253 metres in length, 54 metres in width, and 21 metres in height is no easy task.

Four tugboats pulled the drydock and carefully positioned it at the stern of BOKA Vanguard, one of the largest semi-submersible heavy-lift ships in the world, owned by maritime services provider Boskalis. With a length of 275 metres and a width of over 75 metres, BOKA Vanguard is capable of transporting some of the heaviest and largest structures, including those that are larger than the vessel itself.

“Thanks to the submersible capabilities of BOKA Vanguard, the support of tugboats, and the supervision of the mooring crew and Kuehne+Nagel’s engineering team aboard the drydock, we were able to safely position and lash the structure onto the vessel,” explains Aliye. “The process of securing the drydock was not rushed and took several days: every centimetre, every millimetre had to be double-checked. We also had additional support boats on standby to shuttle crew and engineers between the port, the drydock, and the carrier ship.”

After three days of intense operations, the floating drydock was secured aboard BOKA Vanguard, ready to embark on its 13,500-nautical-mile journey, crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and braving storms with waves reaching up to 20 metres. Due to its size, BOKA Vanguard could not pass through the Panama Canal.

The complexity of the project was truly extraordinary. On the surface, it might sound like a simple heavy-lift job, transporting oversized cargo from Yalova to San Diego. But the cargo measured in hundreds of metres and thousands of tonnes, without engines to move it between the locations, between the continents? That’s something completely different. It took months of planning, designing, measuring, calculating, checking, and then re-checking, re-calculating, to ensure the two sea giants could become one and sail safely.

Bon voyage, BOKA Vanguard.

We will see you in San Diego, where our Kuehne+Nagel USA team awaits to oversee the final delivery to our customer.

Stay tuned!