More than fascination or even astonishment, the feeling evoked by the Eversand ship at work resembles restlessness. Logical. To clean the ocean waters of hydrocarbons, the task she has been entrusted with, the ship does not use shovels, nets, bags, sieves, or anything remotely similar. What she does is open in half and “swallow” large amounts of liquid. As it is.
exactly as if a huge hinge.
Like her sister ship, the Bottsand (Y 1643), the Eversand (Y 1644) is a Bottsand-class (738) oil collection vessel and has a striking peculiarity: it is collapsible, which in practice means that opens up to 65º. Seen in the distance, the maneuver is striking, but it has its logic.
Created to take care of the seas
The oil, oil or any other polluting substance that you want to remove from the ocean ends up pushed towards the central angle formed by the ship, where a collection area is formed that exceeds 40 square meters (m2). As the ship progresses, it absorbs the mixture of water and oil, a substance that is then responsible for separating and pumping it into the tanks it transports on board.
In total the ships are equipped with half a dozen shells that add up to a total capacity of 790 cubic meters. In a matter of one hour of work, it is estimated that a Bottsand can clean and remove around 140 m3 of water contaminated by a two-millimeter surface of oil or petroleum.
The so-called Oil recovery ship Bottsand Class have a length of 43 meters, with double hull and 650 tons of displacement. If they are folded and move like a conventional ship, they are capable of reaching a speed of 10 knots. Both the Eversand and the Bottsand share another trait: they were built in the 1980s. Both came from the C. Lühring shipyard, located in Brake.
Despite the fact that they are already a few decades old, the ships are still making headlines. In 2021, the Bundeswehr —the German armed forces— announced a change at the helm of the Bottsand, which went from the Ministry of Defense to the person in charge of Transport, a procedure that was accompanied by a small change in the external appearance: “The ship, which was previously navy gray, will take on the duties of protection against disasters and water with the black and white painting of the federal authorities with a different crew”, explained the organization.
“Commissioned in 1985, the ship is used to combat possible oil spills in the event of shipwrecks in the Western Baltic Sea,” detailed the Bundeswehr at the time, recalling that the Bottsand was originally based in Olpenitz, north of Kiel, since where it moved to Warnemünde in the 90s due to the proximity of the Kadet channel and to facilitate cooperation with other countries.
As for the Eversand vessel, Täglicher Hafenbericht (THB) and EMS Maritime Offshore published that same year that as of spring 2022 its management would depend on the Erms Maritime Offshore GmbH (EMO). Its point of reference —it was advanced— remains at the Kiel naval base.
Images: Yetdark (Flickr) and Bundeswehr/Tanja Wendt
