Drydock Extension Inspection

The drydock is a complex and expensive process that takes time and ultimately leads to stress for shipowners and charterers. The time required for the drydock, practically means downtime of the vessel. Year after year it becomes more and more difficult to find available dry dock, which is able to serve the ship without forcing a change of course. The combination of all these objective difficulties, has led to a tendency to extend the dry docking (Dry dock inspection for extension purposes), from five to seven years (underwater inspection in lieu of drydocking). All classification societies allow extension of dry docking further to ships inspection (Drydock extension inspections).

The extension of dry docking (Drydock extension) is achieved by a series of underwater operations that replace the drydock, such as:

• Underwater hull cleaning
• Underwater propeller polishing
• Under water sea chests cleaning, underwater sea chests grating cleaning and waterproofing of sea chests (plugging sea-chests)
• Underwater repair and maintenance bow thrusters
• Underwater fitting anodes and underwater replacement anodes

• Underwater rudder repairs
• Underwater replacement rope cutter
• Underwater cutting
• Underwater waterproofing
• Underwater welding
• Underwater propeller repair

• Underwater clearance measurements of rudder pintles.
• Tail-end shaft wear down measurements.
• Under Water Inspections (hull coating inspection , inspection for damage to the hull of the ship after a possible collision, Underwater Thickness measurements of hull plates (ultrasonic), inspection of the propeller, inspection of sea chests, inspection for cracks , hull surveys).
• UWILD – Underwater Inspection in lieu of Dry-Docking.