Month: July 2015

All the excitement has gone and we are back to the mundane. Not much to talk about really except that Our Josie Grace – the resident fishing boat – has had a facelift and has lost its garish orange hue for a smart dark blue get up.

I thought that this was it but my wife noticed that we had another “jack up rig” in for refurbishment. No name on this one yet, though.

Well, here are the last shots of the work on the quay side. They did a good job of cleaning up and removing all of the junk.

Then, we have the first couple of cars to park. It didn’t take more than a few minutes. As you can see, they are still at work taking the management cabin away.

Back to normal then. It has been good fun but we won’t miss the noise or the disruption. We will certainly enjoy getting the parking back again!

There was I thinking that they might tamp the aggregate down or even put a concrete top layer on to match further down. Well, no. It seems that they are finished apart from the clearing up.

Yesterday morning they filled a few more bags of cement for the southern end of the works. They didn’t cover it up but, so far, have left the corner uncovered. They then started to clear all of the aggregate that was put down to protect the road from the crane.

A tipper lorry came down – I missed taking a picture:-( – and parked in this little gap they have left. They then filled it with the aggregate – and so it went all day.

It now looks almost done apart from the southern end.

Further work today in clearing up got a lot more of the gravel gone.

and they got even closer to the end of the quay.

They had a small delivery of concrete and used that to make more bags to drop down the south end of the quay. After that, they finally cleaned up around that point. I have to say that I am concerned about the aggregate compacting down. It doesn’t seem that they are going to do any more work on this so we shall just have to see how the next few months treats the final surface.

By the way, I know that there was a lot of activity down on the Waterfront on Sunday and that I would normally be down there with my camera shooting away. However, my physical ability to walk too far is being eroded. I am hoping to get a really cool lightweight motorised wheelchair soon so I shall be nipping around everywhere. I can’t wait!

First off, we saw a very strange looking ship coming into the port. It was the Scelveringhe. This is a Dutch owned “trailer hopper suction dredger’.

It pulled up to the Sand and Gravel dock and unwound a huge conveyor belt to unload. It did, eventually, close into the dockside, but that wasn’t as interesting a shot!

A little later, I noticed that they were shifting the walkway from the lock down the Wet Dock.

They normally do this when Suntis is due. As I knew that Suntis was still in Sweden loading up for next week, there must be something else of a decent size coming in. A quick check on FleetMon showed that the Stavros S. Niarchos was on its way down the Orwell.

  

There were also a few little boats about that were worth a mention.

All in all, it was a good day to be out on the balcony.

First off, today, a cement lorry arrived.

It turned out the cement was to be used for filling bags that were to reinforce the outer edges of the piling. They cleverly put the three barriers together to hold a bag open then used a funnel to get the cement into each bag with minimal spillage.

The scoop was used to mix some sand into the cement.

You can just see a bag down the side.

In the end they used the scoop to shift the cement bags.

They then used the scoop to disperse the coarse gravel into both ends of the piling, although they only had enough to fully complete one end.

I assume that some more gravel will be delivered tomorrow. I am interested in what they are going to do with the top surface. If you look carefully, you can see all of the foot marks already. In any case, this would blow away with any of the winds that we have had lately.

After a few days of inactivity, things got going again today. Firstly, I can show you the final shots of the piling work. This is a close up of the capping.

This is what it looks like along the full length.

As you can see, there are some big gaps to fill. I, sort of, thought that they might take away all of the old iron works but…

The first lorry turned up with some fairly coarse aggregate, which we thought might go down first.

But then, what do we know? There was a second, third and fourth delivery of some finer stuff.

This is what they used.

They appear just to be dumping it in the gap without regard for the existing structure – oh and they haven’t touched the coarse stuff yet! We will watch this with interest.

They have got to the end of the steel work. The gap that was left at the end has been filled with some 20mm steel sheets that they welded together and fixed in place. It seems that there were budgetary issues with using the long piles at that end as the wet dock floor is not very deep at this point and a couple of steel sheets would do the job rather than those huge piles that they used elsewhere. Here is the final result.

They went from this:

to this:

Once finished, they went along and painted the whole top surface with, what I would presume was, black mastic.

Then,  morning, the lorries turned up to take the crane away. We had a great hour or so whilst the took out all the pins that hold the jib together along with all the safety  bits as well. Finally they had it all broken down and on the lorry it went. The small lorry had its own crane that was operated by the driver from a unit strapped around his waist – obviously some sort of wireless connection. Very up to date.

So here are a series of shots showing the loading of the jib.

Finally, it was the main units turn. The lorry dropped off the trailer and the crane moved, very carefully on. The lorry then picked up the trailer again and was off.

We now await further action. So far today, 9th July, nothing is happening.

There hasn’t been a lot to say as it has been fairly repetitive. They have been building secure structures and then piling – and repeat. They have now finished with the piling. I can say this because there are no more piles left and the huge electric hammer that they were using has gone. They have completed the wall on the Anglo-Norden end but there is still a gap at the Aurora end. In the meantime, they are finishing off the cap. The cap required that they fit small brackets to each pile. They then drilled holes in the capping and bolted it all down. This was followed up with a lot of welding.

We await the next steps with interest. Presumably, they will back fill the piles and then do some (elementary?) landscaping. It will be interesting to watch.

Here are some shots from the last few days as the construction progressed.

Here is the gap that I was talking about. Quite what they are going to do here, I cannot work out. They must do something, surely?