Some more photos taken from work. We were supposed to be going to watch the launch of a ship last night but the guy who was taking us got given the wrong information so we when we got there it was already in the water.
The new ship was assembled in blocks on a slipway (big concrete slope) and held up with hydraulic jacks. Then when it was ready to launch the ship (ie last night at high tide) the jacks were manually released and the 160m long ship slid into the water in about 15 seconds causing the massive wave and splash that you can expect and that we didn't get to see :( I'll try and get hold of the video anyway. I wanted to take some photos of something so there are some photos of the slipway and the ship on the water. So although we didn't get to see the launch, we did get to morning off to sleep which was nice.
The other daytime photos are of one of the blocks being lifted from the yard by one of the giant floating cranes. The block weighs about 1500 tons but the crane can lift up to 3200 tons! Pretty big. Ships and rigs are usually built in blocks (the size of which are limited by the cranes available to lift them) and then put together.
