Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
Today's hottest news-
of course you probably already know
that HENG TONG 77 has been refloated successfully.
That's honestly a moment of pride for all of us.
Before going into the details, let me tell you one more thing:
I'm very thankful to Ayan Shipbreakers,
I'm very thankful to Sea Max,
as well as all the others who filled me in on the details of the event.
Yesterday, I already had a chance to film a nice video for you all,
to tell you about today's events.
But unfortunately (for you), I'm a family man.
I couldn't do it then, but I'm here
with all the information today
for all of you guys.
In my previous video,
I told you that we were to expect high tides today, tomorrow,
and the day after that.
The first attempt to refloat HENG TONG 77 was planned for today.
The plans were better than the previous ones,
more refined compared to the previous ones.
There were three plans in action:
A Plan A, Plan B, and obviously, a Plan C.
All of the arrangements made to refloat HENG TONG 77
involved two tug boats.
One was called Endeavour, the other, Harmony.
Harmony was the bigger one, meant to pull the vessel.
To pull the vessel out, winches were attached to a barge,
and two ropes were passed through them.
As far as I know after talking to Ayan Shipbreakers
and Sea Max,
they told me that
the winches were VLCC winches,
but they weren't sure about their safe working load (SWL).
But we think it must be around 45-46 tonnes per rope.
So, two wire ropes were passed through.
Another idea that I really liked was that
six flat plate anchors were buried into the ground
because they can't maintain their hold on just sand.
So, the anchors were buried into the ground, pulleys were attached to them,
the pulleys had ropes going all the way to the ship,
their other ends were on the ground,
meaning, there are two winches on the ground,
and they turn.
They'd made an angle on the pulley,
which went all the way to the ship's bow.
The wire ropes attached to the anchors were supposed to
help swing the head of the vessel out.
So the barge was pulling it with the help of the wire ropes,
and of course, the winches were also pulling it out.
This separate boat you see was just for logistics purposes, nothing else.
The wires employed were 38 mm.
Again, their SFW is unknown.
I think it must be around 90 to 100 tonnes.
Approximately, something like that.
The wire ropes going all the way to the winches were 2 in quantity;
the wire ropes going all the way to the barge, probably 1 or 2.
I think they eventually employed 1 wire.
The barge was stationed around 900 m away from the ship.
Because remember, the depth here isn't a lot,
and the flat barge, with anchors attached,
was 900 m away from the ship
to pull it out.
So, according to Plan A, the winches and barge
were supposed to swing the ship's bow outwards.
And of course, the tug, Harmony was there to assist as well.
Now, if we talk about Harmony,
it was 1-1.5 nautical miles away from the ship.
If we consider even 1 nm,
that makes a distance of 1.8 km, the length of the ropes
going all the way to the tug boat
were 5 coils of 220 m.
Multiplying 220 by 5, you get a distance of 1.1 km.
So that means Harmony was 1.1 km away from the ship.
The plan of operation was simple:
the barge winches are supposed to pull at the ship's bow,
at the beginning of the high tide.
The wires going from the ship's bow to the onshore winches;
the winches are meant to pull at the ship's bow
to swing it in the direction of the sea.
The tug's there the whole time for assistance.
Once the ship's bow is redirected, moving 200-400 m forward,
towards suitable depth,
the wire ropes attached to the barge will be transported to the other tug boat.
Both tug boats will then carry pull the ship towards the sea.
Obviously, this idea is very good,
and it has worked as well.
That's the good part.
Out of the other two plans,
the second plan didn't involve any barges, only tugs.
From what Ayan Shipbreakers and Sea Max told me,
the last time they tried to pull the ship out,
Its stern was providing too much resistance,
since it was settled in the sand.
This time, however, when transferring from the barge to the tug,
they decided they would try to keep it as smooth as possible, unlike last time.
To keep the wire from breaking.
I asked them and told them I found Plan C the most suitable.
It only involved the help of tugs
to pull the ship out towards the sea.
Then they told me the same thing again,
the ship's stern was highly resistant the last time,
and it would be resistant today as well.
They didn't want the stern's resistance to -
because it's a flatbed ship - to obstruct their way out again.
They said they would go ahead with Plan A,
and, God forbid, if something didn't go according to plan,
they would move on to Plan B, then Plan C.
I'm really happy to know Plan A worked.
It all started before today's expected high tide,
and when the ship's bow was redirected,
going 300 m or so forward,
one of them sent me a message,
They told me they managed to move 300 m forward,
ALLAH willing, the plan would prove successful.
I'm really happy to know it turned out to be successful.
My concern was:
passing the ropes and wires over the ship's Bits
could've ended up breaking the ship's Bits.
They then told me they weren't doing that, i.e.,
they weren't passing any ropes over the ship's Bits.
Instead, inside the ship's bow,
they'd passed a chain through its Panama Fairleads.
The chain was shaped to form a U, after joining the U, a shackle was attached.
They had attached the wires and ropes there
to maintain control over the ship's bow
and to ensure there was no load on the bits.
My next question was regarding the SWL of the Panama Fairleads.
They told me
that the SWL of a Panama Fairlead is technically similar to that of a bit.
I didn't know how much it was, they didn't either.
We estimated it to be 30-35 tonnes.
But since the chain was passed through 2 fairleads the weight was divided.
The load was divided, and it became easy
and I'm happy it got easier for them.
My next concern was about the ship's engine not being good enough.
Not powerful enough.
The ship was very old as well, and its engine wasn't performing well.
They told me that the ship has 2 main engines with a hp of 700.
Two of them.
They admitted that I was right about the engines not performing well,
not being able to offer any assistance.
If that hadn't been the case, the ship would've been refloated 8-10 days ago.
Last time, what went wrong was when they were transferring the rope,
from the barge to the tug,
that transfer basically failed.
The rope had broken, causing the ship to drift back onshore.
I asked them about their backup plan.
God forbid if their rope were to break again, how were they going to cope,
they assured me it wouldn't happen this time.
They would try to be more vigilant at that time,
considering the criticality of that moment.
It was one of the last steps and they
couldn't afford to let the rope break this time, to let the ship drift ashore again.
They told me they would stay vigilant and not let this happen.
And this time, they told me, they had employed an 85 mm rope.
One (rope) string consisted of five 85 mm coils.
Is it 85 mm? Yes, it is. 85 mm.
One string consisted of five 220 m long coils.
There were two in total.
This time they were making sure things would go according to plan.
That the ropes wouldn't break. That the transfer
would be successful this time.
Obviously, things were different than before.
The mistakes they made the last time;
they ironed them out and came up with a fresh plan.
They stationed the barge separately this time.
The anchors were also stationed separately.
They did a really wonderful job.
My next question to them was
about the condition of the ship.
Since I was in touch with them now, I could ask them.
They told me the ship's generator was working.
Everytime there was a high tide,
the generators would get water and work,
providing electricity to the ship.
I asked them about the challenges they had to face
to carry out this operation.
The first was: the 6 submerged anchors that they'd installed,
that was a huge challenge for them.
They had to employ a crane, dig the ground, put in the anchors,
then they had to place 1 tonne rocks over them
to stop them from being displaced.
Attaching pulleys to the anchors was also difficult.
But when I asked them what their biggest challenge was, they said
they had a hard time passing the ropes over the ship.
The draft of the tugs employed was 4 m.
They couldn't come any closer to where the ship was,
otherwise they'd end up grounded too.
Their service boat couldn't pass the rope because the rope was really long,
because as I told you: five 220 m coils.
If the length of a string is 1.1 km, and if a small boat tries to pull that,
it will have a hard time controlling itself, let alone being able to pull the rope.
They followed a very ingenious plan,
they went far out to sea, and left their life raft there.
The life raft then drifted towards where the ship was grounded.
Then using the life raft, they passed a small nylon rope,
then one bigger than that, and then another one,
then finally, they passed the ship's ropes around it.
So, this was quite the challenge for them.
Then comes stationing the barge,
i.e., the barge with the two VLCC winches.
Stationing it, dropping its anchors,
it was a huge issue.
Again the anchors kept dragging along the sand.
It happened in the last operation.
It happened yesterday as well, and they had to reposition it many times
before, you know, conducting the final operation.
I'm really happy and pleasantly surprised at
how organized this operation turned out to be.
And despite a few failed attempts,
we all thought it wouldn't work out. I was 95% sure the ship wouldn't refloat,
because Pakistan, India, Bangladesh.
Any ships grounded here haven't ever been able to get out.
So it's really a moment of pride for all of us,
that HENG TONG 77 was finally freed from the sand.
Then I asked them one more thing.
I asked them what really helped them during this operation.
What exactly was in their favour?
His answer was very simple. He told me it was the size of the ship.
Then I told them that
a lot of ships this size failed to get out of here after being grounded.
He agreed with me, but regardless, it was his goal to refloat the ship.
Because it would be a moment of pride for everyone
the fact that they refloated a grounded ship.
My next question was, "What's next for the ship?"
Are they going to take it to an MBM, or a berth?
They told me their job was to refloat the ship, but they know
that the ship will be taken to a berth.
It will remain arrested there until
all the charges are paid.
I wanted to tell you the entire summary about the operation.
From beginning to end,
I wanted to tell you about all three of the plans,
the plans employed to refloat the ship.
I also wanted to tell you how happy I am that this job has been done.
Congratulations to everyone who was a part of it.
Meanwhile, if you want to know what happened when this ship was grounded
there's a link to a video about that here.
If you want to learn about Ever Given, the link to that video is here.
Take good care of yourselves,
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family
and to-be Orange Shots family.
This is me Zahid Nisar,
you're watching Orange Shots.
And until my next video,
ALLAH Hafiz.