Bahrain’s Arabian Ship Repair Yard (Asry) has completed the final design and specification for a new slipway, which will be coming on stream by the last quarter of 2007, the company reported.

The original design called for a single slipway, some 26 m wide and 226 m long with the capability to handle three vessels at the same time with two side transfer bays. This capability has now been enhanced to accomodate four vessels at any one time using twin slipways.
In the original design, end transfer cradles were to be located on the rails and lowered into the water or hauled out by a winch as required, to ensure the safe handling of the vessels. Vessels entering the slipway would be docked on the end transfer cradle and hauled up to the side transfer cradle, which was to be recessed in a pit so that the rails aligned with the longitudinal rails on the slipway. The side transfer cradles would then move laterally, carrying the ship and end transfer cradle to a side berth. Two side transfer cradles were required for the two berths.
However this original design, after further design studies and analysis has now been enhanced and improved to include two parallel slipways, which are now 255 m long. This new configuration is now capable of handling four vessels. The way the new slipways have been configured is of the vertical curve design, allowing two vessels to be simultaneously berthed, end-to-end on each slipway. Both slipways are in parallel with a total width of the slipway being some 64 m. The overall standing area for the vessels is now 275 m.
The limiting sizes for vessels will remain the same for this new configuration with the maximum length of vessels being 140 m and the maximum breadth 20 m with the extreme draft of 6 m and a displacement of 5,000 tonnes maximum per vessel.
Meanwhile, Asry’s second quarter was, as usual, a busy one, with the yard reporting high demand for all the docks and repair services.
There were 31 vessels booked during the second quarter with 29 repairs completed. Sales revenues were up by some 23 per cent in the same period as last year with contract values rising with these increases. The variety of vessels repaired covered the whole spectrum of the marine industry, ranging from ULCCs and VLCCs through to bulk carriers, chemical carriers, LPG carriers, dredgers, offshore support vessels and drill rigs.
Dock occupancy rates were consistently high with the Graving Dock achieving 100 per cent. Likewise, the two floating docks saw increases in occupancy with 98.9 per cent for Floating Dock Number 2 and 99.4 per cent for Floating Dock Number 3.
A breakdown of ships contracted for repairs at Asry for the first half of this year includes 20 tankers, three chemical tankers, five LPG carriers, seven dredgers, eight bulk carriers, a containership and a Ro Ro carrier, and five offshore vessels including barges, floating cranes and drill rigs. Of the 20 tankers, five were UL/VLCCs.
The Arab markets saw their market share increase to 29 vessels.
The National Drilling Company (NDC) in Abu Dhabi awarded Asry a contract worth $13 million for their offshore jack-up drill rim Al Mariyah. The scope of work mainly involves extensive hull and structure repairs and refurbishment, both externally and internally.