'La Naval' from Sestao delivered the ship 
'Simon Stevin'

Prototype of "Fall pipe" ship type

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In my post  of 5 April 2009 this blog reported about the construction  in 'La Naval '  from Sestao  of   the ship 'Simon Stevin', known as "fall pipe" vessel type, whose mission is twofold, firstly , orderly and precisely placing stones on the sea bottom  for the protection of submarine cables and pipelines in drilling platforms constructions and marine works in general and secondly, extracting minerals from the seabed.

This photo shows the ship at the fitting-out berth in 'LaNaval' some days before her departure to the dry dock.

 

On this video, posted on YouTube by McDonald3072, it nicely illustrates the typical operation of this vessel in her mission to discharge stones.

A few days ago 'La Naval' has delivered this vessel to her owner and big client, the Belgian company Jan de Nul, which currently has under construction two suction dredgers at Sestao: The first is the "Leiv Eiriksson", sister ship of the 'Cristobal Colón', whose departure along 'the Ría de Bilbao' heading the pre-delivery dry dock, was recorded on this post.

And the other dredger, which is a smaller one, but equally very important, will be launched in a few months and delivered within this year, if I'm not wrong.

In this photo we see the 'Simon Stevin' passing under the historical Las Arenas-Portugalete hanging bridge, sailing (backwards)towards the drydock.

All this is good news but no longer so much is the lack of new contracts for the Sestao building berths to be refilled with new constructions. I have information that they are making major contracting efforts, but certainly the market is not exactly brilliant. Hopefully can these new contracts be got quickly.