30 Mar

Integral Hawser Flotation Goes Subsea

The benefits of Integral hawser flotation are of growing interest to operators. Here we feature SPM manager Mark Brook’s Flotation presentation from last year’s Monobuoy conference and a new subsea hawser flotation development.

‘A Different Method of Hawser Flotation’ presented at ‘VI Jornada Latinamericana de Operadores de Monoboyas’ in Uruguay reviewed the hawser options for operators, including configurations and rope constructions. Lace on floats, tubular floats and Z-off floats perform well but can be damaged in use, leading to costly repairs made worse during which the hawser is out-of-service.

Integral flotation provides a better longer lasting solution, of course. The buoyancy is built into the hawser construction, becoming an integral part of the rope. This construction makes the flotation system more robust and longer lasting such that the flotation does not need to be replaced during its operational life.

Download ‘A Different Method of Hawser Flotation’ presentation.

Subsea Floating Hawser

Offspring International is now able to offer a subsea flotation hawser designed to float subsea out of the way of other vessels, but above the seabed. It uses innovative, polyurethane moulded, pellet shaped modules filled with syntactic foam and integrated within the rope during manufacture.

In addition to the service life benefits of an integral hawser, the subsea hawser can be designed to float at a pre-determined depth below the water surface / above the sea bed.

The hawser has already been deployed with a Single Anchor Loading System (SALS) offloading system where the hawser is located between the bottom swivel and a ‘mid-water clump’ weight. The clump weight is suspended during offloading operations, and dropped to the seabed between tankers. The hawser is kept above the seabed using the integral flotation modules.

For more information on Hawser Flotation contact Mark Brooks, SPM sales manager, Offspring International on +44(0) 1384 453880 and email: mark.brooks@offspringinternational.com.