In the middle of the night, a tugboat pulling a fuel barge bound for Maui loses power. Thrusters grind to a halt. Despite the crew's efforts, the problem can't be fixed at sea. The stranded ship must be towed into Honolulu Harbor for repair. It's at times like these that Iain Wood, CEO of Pacific Shipyards International (PSI), gets an urgent phone call. Shipping disruptions can spell disaster for the Islands, so no matter the time of day or night, PSI is prepared. "We're like an ER for ships," says Wood. "When something needs to get fixed fast, they're going to call us and we'll get 'em in and get 'em out."
Located at the water's edge among maritime businesses and commercial fishing ports across from Aloha Tower, PSI helps keep critical maritime functions running smoothly for a state that is almost entirely dependent on transpacific shipping and interisland barge traffic for food, fuel and freight.
PSI's operations at Honolulu Harbor include one of the largest floating dry dock facilities in the Pacific. The mobile dock system provides flexibility to lift large ships out of the water at Pier 24 or to transport the entire dock to another location. Through a clever blend of buoyancy, balance and technical know-how, the mobile dry dock system and its team of engineers and tradesmen can raise ships over 400 feet long and weighing up to 7,500 tons clear out of the water. (By comparison, a Boeing 737 aircraft without fuel weighs about 45 tons).
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(LEFT) A shipyard manager performs a last inspection before MV Carolyn Chouest leaves dry dock. (RIGJT) Welder Micah Vaughn assists with a chain fall.
Whether they're in for emergency repairs or routine maintenance, dry-docked ships are painstakingly balanced on blocks made from concrete and wood to keep them elevated and stable while the work gets done. "Everybody might have heard the term 'dry dock,'" Wood says. "But unless you're familiar with it, it's kind of a great mystery how it actually works."
A new coat of thick, blue marine paint has recently been applied to the hull of the MV Carolyn Chouest, a massive, 3,311-ton Navy-chartered private offshore supply vessel on the day of my PSI visit. Handing me a hard hat before our tour, Wood emphasizes PSI's track record of accident-free operations. "Safety's at the forefront of everything we do," he says in a tone conveying equal parts pride and warning. Wood is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy; he arrived in Hawaii in 1997 with his wife not long after graduating, "with six suitcases, two dogs and no job, no house, no nothing," he says. He quickly found work within the local maritime community, and after a couple of other stints, including time as a civilian port engineer for the Navy, Wood landed at PSI in 2001. He rose through the ranks to become CEO in 2016. He's friendly and knowledgeable, but it's clear he takes safety seriously. On the day of my visit, PSI had had more than two hundred consecutive injury-free days, and they will not be happy if this landlubber breaks that streak. I promise to be careful, and it's game on.
Wood is upbeat despite working on a Saturday as we step out of the office, through the security gate (where everyone's ID is checked, including his), across the lot and onto the huge new dock, which is mostly hidden from the traffic zipping by on nearby Nimitz Highway. We're joined by PSI's vice president of programs, Troy Keipper, a naval architect and marine engineer who used to design and race sailboats. Keipper spent seventeen years with PSI's parent company, Pacific Marine, doing engineering and design work for their research and development, PacMar Technologies (formerly Navatek LLC), before coming over to PSI almost three years ago to focus on the critical work of maintenance and repair.
Workers use chain falls to lift objects onto PSI’s floating dry dock, one of the largest such facilities in the Pacific.
The hum of traffic gives way to the sound of water splashing against steel as we board the enormous floating dock. Despite being just a stone's throw from the road, it's an entirely different world. Seeing a large ship in the water up close might be impressive, but standing below that ship when it's propped up on blocks is nothing short of immersive-it is truly awesome. The freshly painted, bright blue hull stretches overhead for nearly the length of a football field. At the stern, two workmen sit high above us, comfortably situated within the ring of one of the ship's two colossal propeller enclosures, machining new bearings for the propeller shaft. Rather than order parts and ship them over, it's faster to make the high-precision components on-site, using equipment that can produce bearings accurate to within thousandths of an inch. Nearby, the removed propeller sits safely aside with its shaft wrapped for protection, the eleven-foot-diameter blade towering above us.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the surreal ship-out-of-water scene is the balancing act: The ship is carefully stabilized on a scattering of support blocks, producing the illusion of near-levitation. The blocks seem almost inconsequentially small to my eye, considering the mass they're supporting. But they're placed strategically, aligning with the ship's optimal load-bearing points from bow to stern. Just as an automobile has notches for a jack, a ship must be supported in just the right spots to spread the weight across the blocks.
"We take a drawing that shows the actual ship lines, or shape of the vessel," explains Keipper. "Then the shipyard basically custom-cuts all the blocks to align with the shape of the hull. Those get placed on the dock according to a blocking plan. Then the dry dock will be lowered down underwater, and we bring the vessel in and position it over the blocks."
"We use different tools like lasers and pointers to line the vessel up," says Wood, who personally oversees each docking event. "Then we send divers down to help guide it and do final checks." Those visual checks can be critical, Keipper says. "Sometimes you have a drawing that says this is the way it's supposed to be built. But then we discover that the drawings weren't really exact, and the divers will have to reposition things underwater."
Shipyard workers finish reinstalling MV Carolyn Chouest’s massive rudders. Repairs are usually carried out at Pier 24 in Honolulu Harbor, but the dry-dock system is mobile and can be towed to where it’s needed.
The process relies on communication, skill and real-world experience, with Wood orchestrating the operation like a maestro. The ship is floated into position, then moored to the dock above water, typically with four lines on each side to help adjust it. "We have to communicate between the divers and our guys on top to control the exact position," Wood says. "If they tell me we gotta move an inch this way or that, then we'll move an inch this way or that." An inch might not seem like much difference when guiding ships of up to four hundred feet, but for some vessels there's even less wiggle room. Some Coast Guard ships, for example, must be positioned to within half an inch.
Once a ship is in position, the water is pumped out of the sunken dock, and the ship rises along with the entire platform. Above the water, ships can receive anything from a new coat of paint and routine maintenance ("We call the standard scheduled service a 'shave and a haircut,'" Keipper quips), to a complete overhaul, emergency repairs or other work. The ship's crew typically remain in their quarters even when the ship is up on blocks. In many cases, shipboard operations continue even in dry dock, so the crews are busy. "They live on the ship while it's at sea," Keipper explains. "When it's in dry dock they're still on the ship, so we're getting groceries and supplies. They're living, sleeping, doing their laundry, eating dinner. We deal with getting fresh water, and the waste stream coming off the ship. It's the whole cycle of life."
Across the shipyard, more surreal and awesome sights: Multiple vessels in various stages of repair or refurbishment lie on smaller docks, in the water or up on blocks. There's an experimental "amphibious connector," a military transport designed to carry tanks from a ship up onto the shore. It sports what look like huge tank treads lined with swiveling paddle-wheel flaps, providing propulsion at sea and traction on land. Another piece of military gear is a Navy torpedo-retrieving vessel pulled out of the water by crane and transported across the lot in stages, moving the vessel about forty feet at a time by lowering it onto new blocks, repositioning the crane and re-blocking for each step. There's heavy equipment in every direction, massive chains, hinges the size of bank-safe joints, snatch blocks on steroids. At the end of the pier, giant 747 aircraft tires form a cushion to stop ships from scraping against the concrete. Yes, despite all of this technology, old tires are still the best bumpers around.
Pacific Shipyards International’s dry-dock system can handle ships over 400 feet long and weighing 7,500 tons; the Navy-chartered private offshore supply vessel MV Carolyn Chouest, seen above sporting a fresh coat of paint, weighs in at a mere 3,311 tons.
PSI's origins go back to 1944. During World War II, as fighting raged across every continent but Antarctica, America's Pacific fleet needed maintenance. A local entrepreneur named Fred HM Loui started Pacific Refrigeration Inc. in Honolulu to service the fleet. More than three-quarters of a century later, the family-owned operation now known as Pacific Marine is overseen by the founder's son, Steven Loui. The firm has grown to encompass several diversified maritime companies that help keep commercial and military vessels operating throughout the Pacific region. Pacific Shipyards International is one of the crown jewels in this enterprise.
Loui has followed in his late father's footsteps, building a reputation for innovation in Hawaii, so it might come as no surprise that PSI holds the distinction of being the world's first and only commercial dry dock facility operating completely off-grid, with no connection to the electrical utility. There was no commercial power at Pier 24 when PSI moved into its current location in 2017 after operating at Pier 41 since 1984. The company elected to install its own alternative: a renewable energy system with more than 1,700 solar panels forming a roughly one-acre canopy over a large portion of the shipyard, plus battery storage and diesel generators for backup. When a commercial utility connection is eventually completed, it will serve as a backup system rather than the primary power source.
Besides managing and powering their own dry docks, PSI personnel also make house calls, servicing larger commercial and military ships while still afloat or in other dry docks. In some cases they perform their work in one of the massive graving docks at Pearl Harbor, where they've worked on mega-vessels like the Mighty Mo, the USS Missouri. In contrast to floating dry docks, graving docks are permanent basins carved into the seafloor, which can be flooded or drained to perform maintenance on ships nearly a thousand feet long. Keeping large Navy vessels shipshape is no small feat. "The jobs can be pretty intense," says Wood. "We might have a hundred people or more on base at any given time working on the ships, often in two shifts and sometimes even three."
“Everybody might have heard the term, ‘dry bock,’” says PSI’s CEO Iain Wood. “But unless you’re familiar with it, it’s kind of a mystery how it actually works.”
It's hard to say whether founder Fred Loui could have known how important his company would eventually become for Hawaii, but there's no doubt he would be proud to see how it's grown. The ability to bring world-class equipment, experienced engineers, mechanics, tradesmen and skilled laborers to fix maritime problems of virtually any scale at any time makes PSI an integral part of Hawaii's economic, strategic and military support infrastructure.
Returning to the office building, I hand the hard hat back to Wood, glad to have never put it to the test. Then again, given that the ship above us weighed more than seven million pounds, the protection offered by the hat might have been limited. While the ship hoisted overhead was impressive, the floating dock is the real marvel. "The new dock was named by an employee," Wood says. "Her winning entry seemed just right." Hoola i na Moku, he says, translates as "healing the ships.”
