SAL Heavy Lift vessel, MV Lone has entered the record books by achieving a 20 day transit between Batum  in Indonesia and the Firth of Forth in Scotland.  The 12,500DWT specialised heavy-lift ship completed the 8,733 nautical mile voyage at an average speed of 19.3 knots on the 16th May.
SAL Heavy Lift vessel, MV Lone
SAL Heavy Lift vessel, MV Lone
Hamburg - For SAL Heavy Lift, the Hamburg-based ship owner and operator, crafting well engineered transport solutions for cargoes that are too heavy, out-of-gauge or of such awkward dimensions that conventional forms of shipping are impossible, is its usual speciality.  But sometimes it’s out and out speed that gets the job done. An average speed of 19.3 knots, 22.2 mph or 35.7 kph in land speed terms, sustained over such a long distance is a considerable achievement and for a specially equipped vessel like MV Lone, it’s a record.  The vessel, built in 2011 at J J Sietas’ yard in Hamburg, is 12,500DWT has an LOA of 160 metres and a beam 28 metres*. In the case of this voyage, the cargo, a Submerged Turret Production (STP) buoy weighing eleven hundred tons, had a tight delivery schedule of three weeks.  It was destined for an off-shore location some miles from the East Coast of Scotland and was required on site so as not to delay the start of a drilling project.  SAL made available MV Lone, one of the largest vessels in its fleet of fourteen multi-purpose heavy-lift units, which are deployed on both regular semi-liner services around the world and have availability to service one-off projects. The in-house engineering team were engaged to design the logistical side of the operation but it was left to the MV Lone and her crew to plot a safe course and to attain the maximum speed across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal to North Europe via the Mediterranean. Commenting on the record-breaking run, Matthias Meyer, SAL’s Project Manager said, “A journey of nearly nine thousand nautical miles is not quite halfway around the world but it is not far short.  To maintain this sort of average speed through all weathers is an impressive feat of seamanship and we are proud of the officers and crew of Lone for making this possible.” Although SAL’s fleet of vessels have unrivalled speed and carrying capacity that rank among the largest of their type, it is the company’s ability to meet the requirements of the most  challenging and complex of cargo moves that maintains its long-standing reputation for reliability and on-time delivery.