EASILY forgotten now, but five years ago, July 15, 2019, Dutch heavy lift vessel Boka Vanguard performed an extraordinary task by transporting a 4000-passenger cruise ship on its deck, and turning itself into a dry dock. The operation was necessary because while approaching the Bahamas the Carnival Vista had developed propulsion system problems, it needed repair, but the dry dock at the Grand Bahama Shipyard was temporarily out of commission.
Boskalis-owned Boka Vanguard, the largest vessel of its kind, is a semi-submersible. It came to the rescue, lowered itself below the water surface, allowing the cruise ship to move above it, then came back to the surface and became a drydock. It loaded and secured the 133,500-ton vessel, which took some 12 hours to complete, then moved the ship a few miles off the coast of Freeport, Bahamas.
The repairs to the azipod propulsion system, which had been causing speed issues, went off without a glitch. The Carnival Vista resumed her regular service out of Galveston, Texas, twelve days later.
