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The VB-10000 heavy lift vessel, with its twin gantries, waits to cut the next section of the capsized vessel Golden Ray, Dec. 1, 2020, on St. Simons Island, Ga.
A towering, floating crane arrived on the Georgia coast in October to remove giant chunks of a cargo ship that overturned more than a year ago off St. Simon’s Island. The crane, known as the VB-10,000, was soon straddling the shipwreck of the Golden Ray, a South Korean vessel that capsized Sept. 8, 2019, approximately 70 mi. south of Savannah. The ship had just left the Port of Brunswick with 4,200 automobiles in its cargo decks, most of which remain onboard. Experts decided the Golden Ray was too badly damaged to be removed intact, and instead produced a plan to slice it
into six massive pieces for removal by barge. That precipitated bringing in the VB-10,000, which employs a large chain designed to saw the 656-ft.-long ship into six giant chunks. A spokesperson for the multi-agency Unified Command overseeing the salvage operation initially said the demolition and removal of the vessel would begin a few days after the crane’s appearance at the site. But a problem arose with the anchoring system that engineers had built to steady the giant crane. One of the five anchors failed a strength test to prove it could hold against the required tonnage, said Coast Guard
Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Himes, a command spokesperson. In November, the anchoring of the 255-ft.-high crane was fixed and the slicing apart of the Golden Ray was finally able to commence. The plan calls for the ship’s massive pieces to be hauled away on barges. Built by Gulf Marine Fabricators of Aransas Pass, Texas, and operated by Houston-based Versabar, the VB-10,000 is a heavy-lift twin-gantry catamaran consisting of two truss space frames atop a pair of barges. Its design was derived see CRANE page 6