Vigor Industrial said that the country’s largest floating drydock, the Vigorous, was delivered to its Portland shipyard on the Willamette River.
Fully assembled, the drydock will be 960 feet long; however, it is currently in three parts, which are stacked aboard a 738-foot heavy lift ship for delivery. The delivery provides unique opportunities to see both the new drydock and the specialized ship carrying it up river.
Vigor invested more than $50 million to build and deliver the Vigorous. The drydock will allow Vigor to service vessels such as cruise ships, tankers and cargo ships. It also will free the company to send another drydock from Portland to Seattle, expanding capacity there.
Frank Foti, Vigor CEO, says the new drydock will allow the company to better serve a range of customers with large vessels at a time when total large drydock capacity on the West Coast has been shrinking. Two large vessels, Maritime Administration cargo ships, are already booked for repairs when the drydock enters service in November.
”The drydock is attracting new business and new jobs to the region,” said Foti. “Without the Vigorous, these large ship repair projects and the family-wage shipyard jobs they create would just go somewhere else.”
“Skilled shipyard workers can earn between $40,000 to $80,000 per year, and more with overtime,” Foti said. On average, servicing the Algol and Capella cargo ships will create about 130 jobs each while those projects are underway at Vigor. For more information on visit www.vigorindustrial.com/vigorous.
