Walcon Marine has designed, built and despatched a bespoke bridge and pontoon to the harbour authority of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Its primary purpose is to be the point of entry and exit for the 80,000 plus tourists who arrive at Port Stanley between October and March each year on board cruise ships.
The harbour authorities had been discussing replacing the previous floating jetty for some time. Both the structure, originally built for domestic use, and its location were inadequate, with the largest cruise ships capable of bringing up to 4,000 visitors. Long queues of passengers waiting in the open air to embark and disembark were becoming increasingly common.
Project planning for a new access bridge plus pontoons got underway in 2022 and, once Walcon Marine was on board, the design brief was agreed; to create a safe and stable facility that would be long enough to accommodate four tenders (two on each side), each 10 to 14 metres in length and capable of carrying up to 100 passengers. It also had to be safe and efficient; able to move passengers between the tenders and the shore as rapidly as possible. The requirement was the supply of commercial-grade pontoons with non-slip decking and Kee-Klamp handrails, with many of the visitors being of retirement age.
“The new finger pontoon installation adjacent to the public jetty has been a huge improvement for the safety of its users,” says Steuart Barlow, Harbour Master, Falkland Islands Maritime Authority (FIMA). I have personally been on the pontoon during choppy seas and the stability of the pontoon has been proven to be very stable with minimal movement. The addition of a central handrail is an added safety measure which provides users greater confidence when using the pontoon. I have spoken with cruise ship exhibition staff who have been coming to the Falklands for many years and they have had positive feedback on the new pontoon.
“From a FIMA perspective, this pontoon has been used more than once to extract casualties from ships/harbour launches. The widened gangway provides stretcher bearers easy access when transferring patients in stretches to the waiting ambulance in the car park. For single ship tendering operations, it provides the tender coxswain an option to use either the East or West side of the pontoon during times of challenging weather. FIMA and other marine users are very happy with this new installation.”
The new equipment was fabricated at Walcon Marine’s factory in Hampshire, UK, and the units loaded at Southampton. The voyage took 30 days, arriving in Port Stanley after an 8,400 nm journey! The installation was completed by a local contractor in September 2024, in time for the start of what has turned out to be a very busy cruise season.