Big Blue Rising
Written by Lt. J.G. Wade Thomson and Ensign Richard Russell
CGF 2011 Volume: 3 Issue: 6 (December)
In the early morning hours on January 3, 2011, the floating dry dock known as “Big Blue” for its signature blue paint job sank unexpectedly at its station near the mouth of Inner Apra Harbor, Guam. A critical facility servicing the U.S. maritime fleet, the $70 million dry dock that once had reign over large-scale vessel contracts in the Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea was in jeopardy.
The salvage job presented a challenge that experts had never before seen: a floating dry dock designed to sink and raise itself with a large vessel onboard was now sunken accidentally and unable to recover. More than just a complex recovery operation, the 26-year-old dry dock potentially carried untold amounts of marine pollutants. In the days immediately following the sinking, concerns ran high in the public over the pollution risks. U.S. Coast Guard officials from Sector Guam immediately took to the task of pollution and safety assessments.
U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy marine engineers provided safety oversight for the operation, which also was a potential hazard to navigation. If the dry dock slipped its anchorage and moved, or if oily waste had leaked from its tanks, it could have hampered operations in the highly valuable Navy and Coast Guard port and threatened neighboring environmentally sensitive areas.
Historical Fixture
Its original name given by the Navy was the Machinist Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock 8 (AFDB-8). The now weathered and not so brightly colored dry dock has had a notable history, even before its service in Guam. In 1986, Big Blue, known then as “Machinist,” was built in Bremerhaven, Germany, by the Seebeck Shipbuilding Yard. At 825 feet long and 175 feet wide, upon completion the dry dock was then heavy lifted from Germany on a lengthy transit to Subic Bay, Philippines. Once in the Philippines, the Machinist was commissioned into service by the Navy in 1988 and remained there for four years supporting several Department of Defense ships. In 1992, as the Navy withdrew from Subic Bay, the dry dock was towed to Hawaii and was in the inactive fleet until 1999. The Machinist was removed from the Naval Register in 1999 and sold to Guam Shipyard in 2000. In 2004, the Machinist was put back in operation.
Acquiring Big Blue and keeping it in Guam enabled Guam Shipyard to offer repair services in a very remote region of the Pacific, where similar facilities did not exist. Under the Jones Act, U.S. flagged vessels must use U.S. shipyards for dry dock repairs. Being the only operational dry dock facility in the region, keeping Big Blue in service was of the upmost importance to Guam Shipyard. Without it, the closest availability of dry dock services for larger U.S. military ships operating in the Western Pacific would be Hawaii, a distance of more than 3,000 nautical miles.
Costly Combination
Going into its 25th year of service, Big Blue was in need of significant repairs. In the middle of these repairs on January 3, 2011, Coast Guard Sector Guam received an alarming notification from Navy Harbor Security: Big Blue was sinking, possibly on fire and adrift in Outer Apra Harbor. Personnel from all of Coast Guard Sector Guam’s departments and Station Apra Harbor were alerted and Coast Guard small boats rushed to the incident scene.
Station Apra Harbor deployed a 25-foot RB-S, a small, rigid hull inflatable boat, which surveyed the waters around the dry dock, locating floating debris and to verify no people were onboard Big Blue or in the water. Shore-side responders quickly confirmed with Guam Shipyard that no employees were on board, ruling out the need for a search and rescue case.
After an initial assessment, the situation was not as grave as originally reported. Several electrical panels had submerged beneath the waterline, causing sparks as electricity continued to flow through the lines before shorting out. However, the floating dry dock that once sat well above the water was merely three feet above the water at its lowest point, with several compartments that should have been watertight completely flooded.
Coast Guard Response
As the sun rose on January 3, Coast Guard Sector Guam began the process to establish a Unified Command with Guam Environmental Protection Agency and Guam Shipyard to manage the recovery process. With the Unified Command and Incident Command System in place, the assessment of the dry dock and overall planning began. “The primary concerns throughout the response [were] the safety of responders and mitigating the pollution threat,” said Captain Sparks during an interview with local media. “Of particular concern to us [were] turtle nesting grounds in Sumay and Clipper coves as well as Sasa Bay, and also some fish hatchery areas of concern in between those areas,” he said. The best thing that could have happened is for nothing to get into the water.
Hazards: Pollution, Debris, and Worker Safety
Guam Shipyard officials reported no signs of petroleum leaking from the dry dock’s oil tanks the following day after a team of divers conducted a survey of the dock. “There were reports of a minor sheen some time [the day after the sinking]. It’s hard to know the source of that, but if nothing else there was enough residual grease and oil products on the deck of the dry dock itself that could have caused the sheen,” said Sparks. Floating boom was deployed as a precaution in case of a pollutant release and Navy helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25 (HSC-25) assisted by taking aerial photos of Big Blue and the surrounding waters to ensure there were no signs of oil or debris that could become hazards to navigation.
Initial estimates indicated that a potential 83,000 gallons of wastewater, a mixture of oil or diesel with seawater, could be on Big Blue. After reviewing schematics of the dry dock, several tanks potentially filled with oil products were identified. Soundings of all known tanks on Big Blue needed to be conducted to confirm the total potential discharge, a first priority for the response.
“Identifying all the tanks and where the pollutants were that was the biggest challenge,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Aaron Swanson, who works in pollution mitigation at Sector Guam and was assigned as a documentation specialist for this incident.
To further assist with the response, Sector Guam brought in a member from the Coast Guard District Response Advisory Team, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ryan Dickson, based in Honolulu, and three members of the Pacific Strike Team, BMC Benjamin Gamad, YN1 Benedict Lizama and MK2 Kurt Stricklen, to assist Guam Shipyard with establishing recovery goals and bringing forward the necessary expertise to ensure all fuel and oil was removed from Big Blue with no impact to the environment.
Once enough of the machinery space was dewatered, the first tank identified on Big Blue as a pollution threat was a diesel generator fuel tank with a capacity of 22,000 gallons. After testing fuel transfer lines, Sector Guam reviewed the fuel transfer plan, allowing Guam Shipyard to transfer diesel fuel from Big Blue to a tank on a Guam Shipyard tug boat, Marianas Voyager.
Mitigating the Pollution Threat
The process began at the rate of 480 gallons per hour transferred from the generator fuel tank. This tank was the largest source of fuel known to be on the dry dock and a significant step in mitigating potential negative environmental impact. The following day, Guam Shipyard successfully transferred approximately 11,000 gallons of diesel fuel onto the tug Marianas Voyager, emptying the diesel fuel tank aboard Big Blue ahead of schedule. With the diesel fuel removed from Big Blue, Guam Shipyard moved forward with plans to remove oily wastewater from the machinery space that was still submerged. Guam Shipyard purchased additional pumps in a determined effort to increase their ability to remove more water from the dry dock.
Dewatering efforts continued in the dry dock’s starboard side machinery space. This machinery space contained a lube oil tank and sludge oil tank. Every precaution was taken to remove the oily water mixture from the machinery space. At this point in the response, approximately 41,000 gallons of sea water that mixed with oily residue from the machinery space had been transferred off Big Blue to isolation tanks. Around-theclock dewatering operations within a few days removed nearly 97,000 gallons of oily wastewater from Big Blue’s starboard side machinery space. With the oily wastewater removed, workers were able to work safely in the machinery space of the dry dock.
Several days later, around the second week of the response, workers were able to safely reach the last known remaining fuel sources aboard the dry dock: a lube oil tank and a sludge tank. Once the transfer lines were tested, transfers began on both tanks, removing 100 gallons of lubricant oil from the lube oil tank and another 707 gallons of waste oil from the sludge tank.
With all known oil products removed from Big Blue, activities below the water started, as divers worked to re-establish watertight integrity of other spaces still submerged. Guam Shipyard workers also moved forward on the meticulous process of cleaning the diesel engine and internal pumping equipment, which would eventually enable the dry dock to rise under its own power.
A Team Salvage and Recovery Effort
The complex operation of raising the dry dock required input, planning and oversight from a number of experts in varied disciplines. By early afternoon March 3, 2011, 61 days after the sinking, a multi-agency team of marine salvage contractors and military safety oversight representatives witnessed the raising of Big Blue almost to its designed floating state, its wings reaching several stories above the water line. The 12-hour operation started the night before, with water pumping operations that drained the dry dock’s flooded compartments incrementally.
Big Blue rose throughout the morning on March 3, see-sawing its way upward out of the water. Jets of seawater spray could be seen shooting out the pressure relief valves like geysers as a result of air expanding from a pressurized state inside buoyancy tanks as the structure was brought to the surface from as far as 60 feet below.
Unique Technical Challenge
The successful 12-hour operation took more than a month of preparation. Underwater salvage experts were hired by Guam Shipyard early in the salvage process and worked 40 days to raise Big Blue. Numerous high-surf advisories during those weeks stressed the importance of safety throughout the process, but delays in starting the salvage were not a result of nature’s intervention. Rather, the unique engineering aspects of Big Blue posed challenges to salvage crews that required creative thinking and research.
Before the lifting could take place, massive cranes were used to offload heavy equipment on the open decks of the submerged dry dock to relieve pressure from the compromised structure, a portion of which rested unevenly on the sea floor. Underwater damage surveys and repairs were conducted by local dive crews, and Guam Shipyard workers kept water pumps working around the clock during the entire two month span to maintain buoyancy and keep the dry dock from sinking completely. Coast Guard personnel stood watch alongside shipyard and salvage workers throughout the entire operation, ensuring basic safety precautions were adhered to by all personnel. No injuries were reported throughout the process.
Further engineering oversight was provided by Coast Guard and Navy specialists flown to Guam from off-island. Coast Guard Marine Safety Center Salvage Engineering Response Team Lieutenant Michael Venturella and Lieutenant Andrew Czarniak reviewed the salvage plan drafted by salvage master Resolve and naval architects from Heger. Captain Stephen Reimers and Lieutenant Commander Derek Peterson of U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet’s Fleet Maintenance, Commander Norman Maples of Navy Base Guam, and Lieutenant Commander Derek Peterson from 7th Fleet Diving and Salvage Operations, were on scene to augment Coast Guard oversight throughout the process.
Mission Complete
The raising of Big Blue on March 3 was completed with no injuries, no pollution and no hazards to navigation. Divers worked to patch all openings in the dry dock’s hull, and Guam Shipyard officials expected to complete repairs and get the dry dock back to full operation, continuing its service to U.S. ships in the Pacific region. Just days later, on the 66th day of operations, the Coast Guard, Navy and contractors reconvened during the final stages of dewatering. The respective parties deemed the major risks of pollution and personnel hazards averted and demobilized the Unified Command, ending Coast Guard oversight of the operation. ♦