New Indpress

Bangalore, Nov 7: The blue water Indian Navy will have more operational flexibility when the unique ship-lift and transfer system for dry docking of ships at integrated Naval base INS Kadamba at Karwar will be formally inaugurated on Wednesday November 8.

With this, the turnaround time for ship repairs at the Naval Ship Repair Yard (NSRY) will come down considerably. “Its an exclusive facility, which is quite swift and ships will be ready for action within a very short span of time,” a senior Navy officer told this paper.

The ship-lift is capable of lifting upto 10,000 tonne vessels of 175m x 28 m sizes. The port will be able to accommodate 42 ships. In later stages, even ships from other nations can also come to one of the cleanest ports in the world to use the facility.

In the conventional system; ‘graving dock’ ships occupy the docking facility for nearly 45 days. They were docked and water is emptied from there, before the repair work can be taken up.

The new dry-docking facility will ensure that ships are lifted from the water and sent to the repair yard in just a day or two. In simple terms, the shiplift is a large elevator platform which can be lowered into water, have a ship hauled in and positioned over the cradles preset on the platform and then lifted vertically to the ground level so that the ship can be moved from the platform onto a dry berth on land.

The NSRY, which commenced its operations on November 14, 2005, is being commanded by Commander S M Rajeshwar. The dry-docking facility is a new addition to the Navy base, which is flanked by beautiful bays and islands on one side and the picturesque Western Ghats on the other.

The Naval base with its state-of-the art maintenance facility will house most of the frontline ‘destroyers,’ missile frigates and the only aircraft carrier in the Indian Navy, INS Virat.

Aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, which India is planning to acquire, will also be anchored at the new base, sources said. The Russian made aircraft carrier, which the Navy plans to christen INS Vikramaditya, is almost one-and-half times bigger than INS Virat.

The base is all set to become the flag-bearer of Indian Navy and will also emerge as the hub of Navy’s activities in future as other bases in the country are crowded and do not have much scope for expansion.