Design and Engineering
PCCI was tasked to perform maintenance on the four-point mooring system at Wake Island, a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean. As part of the maintenance, PCCI provided newly designed mooring system components, including buoys and sinkers, to replace worn components, and provided an improved chain capture device with enhanced capacity, operability and safety features.
Mobilization
PCCI elected to mobilize for the project in Honolulu, Hawaii. PCCI procured and shipped all mooring system components to the material staging area, provided equipment and instrumentation, chartered vessels, and provided the personnel needed to safely install the moorings with careful consideration of the installation on the marine ecosystem. The mobilization required careful planning due to the remoteness of Wake Island and the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic to ensure everything that might possibly be needed was included.
105mm
Chain Diameter
17
Personnel Onsite
Nov. 2020
Completion Date
14
Material Suppliers and Subcontractors
Mooring Removals and Installations
The existing mooring buoys, chain, 5-ton concrete sinkers, and 20-ton concrete anchors were all removed by PCCI and replaced with new mooring components. PCCI installed four new tension bar foam buoys, swivel shackles, continuous lengths of large diameter mooring chain with zinc anodes attached to the studs, 16 steel sinkers with associated sinker shackles, and four 10-tonne Vryhof Stevshark Rex anchors.
Pull Testing
PCCI engineered and developed a plan to safely test each of the newly deployed anchor legs, and conducted a horizonal pull test to 100,000-lbf on each of the four newly installed mooring legs. After completion of the tests, navigation lights were attached to the buoys and activated. The crane barge was then prepared for it’s return to Pearl Harbor, HI and demobilization where the removed materials were disposed of or reutilized.
