The Flight of Europa

Описание: 25/7/2023

You’ve probably heard about the mythical Flying Dutchman but today, another legendary ship learned how to fly. When we arrived at the shipyard at 08:00, the excitement of the task ahead was tangible. The cranes went around all morning for the last touch ups and the operations officially started around midday. In the early afternoon, there was already a few centimeters more between the keel and the ground. A few dozen phones started recording as Europa went higher and higher. We were extremely lucky weather wise: winds coming down from Table Mountain can be quite strong and sudden, which would have prevented cranes from operating, but we were blessed with blue skies, sunshine, and not enough winds for us to notice. As the sun came down, the shipyard kept buzzing with energy as we saw a very straight boat being slowly laid down onto her new keel blocks, as smoothly as if she’d been a small model ship. But nothing during this whole month of preparation was as easy as it seemed and the collective effort that was put into making this day happen was gigantic. For the deck crew, it was an “out of the comfort zone” experience as we are definitely not used to not being manually involved with the care of our dear ship. For us today, it was a lot of pacing, staring, and waiting as we let the experts operate their magic.

Amelie Marchand

On May 20th, after a dry-docking period in Cape Town, an incident occurred resulting in Bark EUROPA partly falling over as she was being placed back in the water.

After caring for our crew and stabilizing the vessel, our team began working with experts from renowned salvage company Resolve Marine, to right Bark EUROPA with a lifting gantry.

On July 25th EUROPA was upright again, and after careful disassembly of the lifting equipment EUROPA was returned to a repair lane, where our recovery efforts are being continued.

🎥 Drone by René van Dijk - Arntz | Van Helden
🎥 Timelapse by Amelie Marchand