Wenzhou Port accomodats the largest ship ever

A few days ago, guided by two senior pilots at the Wenzhou Port Pilot Station, the 315 meters long LNG ship"ONAIZA" (Gross Tonnage:136980) safely docked at the Zhejiang Energy Wenzhou Xiaomen Island LNG Terminal. It is reported that it is the largest vessel that has ever berthed at Wenzhou Port.

The LNG Terminal was put into operation in the second half of 2023, mainly responsible for energy supply to Wenzhou. Due to its unique structure and limited width of the vessels roundabout water area at its forefront, piloting at the terminal is the toughest among all docks of Wenzhou Port. The Marshall Islands’ vessel ONAIZA has a total length of 315 meters and a width of 50 meters. On this voyage, it shipped 139,000 cubic meters of natural gas from Qatar to Wenzhou. It is the ship with the maximum length that Wenzhou Port has accomodated since its opening.

How to crack the nut of the largest plus the toughest? The Wenzhou Port Pilot Station took seriously the application for piloting filed by ONAIZA. It made a special discussion for the conditions of the ship before granting an approval. Its technical backbones developed a thorough pilot plan and emergency preplan based on ship data, hydrology, meteorology, tidal current, marine traffic, arrival time, etc., and improved piloting details through meticulars argumentation. The pilot station also coorperated with local maritime, port and navigation, fishery and other relevant units in cleaning up the waterway before letting the ship in.

At 1pm on March 18th, two senior pilots boarded ONAIZA at the designated location on time. Under the escort of Wenzhou’s patrol boats and tugboats, two-hour piloting guided the ship to the forefront of the dock, which then berthed successfully with the assistance of four tugboats.

It is reported that based on the successful guidance, the Wenzhou Port Pilot Station will continue to improve the piloting work of ships for energy materials, espacially LNG vessels, to sensure their safely entering and leaving Wenzhou.(ZhongXin)