Towheads Travelling Through Wick To Subsea 7 Wester Site - 17 March 2020
10th March 2020
Subsea 7 will be moving 2 towheads for the Buzzard Project from Wick Harbour to Wester Site in the coming days.
The first towhead move is much the same as a normal towhead move and it is planned to leave Wick Harbour on Friday 13th March at around 09:30 and proceed directly to Wester Site - see sketch below. This journey should be relatively quick and cause limited disruption.
The second towhead is much larger and requires special trailers which will necessitate a two stage move. The first stage will see the towhead travel through Wick from the Harbour on the morning of Monday 16th March and make its way out to Lochshell Business Park, incorporating a stop along the way to allow traffic to pass (as illustrated below). While at Lochshell the structure will be transferred onto a different trailer arrangement to complete the rest of the journey to Wester. The second stage will commence on the morning of Tuesday 17th March, leaving from Lochshell and travelling along the normal route to Wester Site.
Exact timings will depend on weather conditions and how the Police direct proceedings, but based on previous experience the first towhead will leave the harbour between 09:00 and 09:30, and take about 2 hrs to reach Wester. The time for the second towhead will be longer due to the size and trailer arrangement - we anticipate approximately 4.5 hours for the move on 16th March and 1.5 hours for the move on 17th March.
As usual, due to the extreme width of all the structures, we require the route (identified by cones) to be clear of all cars and other vehicles.
To assist car owners and businesses we have the following arrangement for traffic cone placement:
If we intend to travel through town we will put the cones out the previous day. Subsequently if there is a gap between moves we will remove the cones and replace them the day before we intend to move the next structure. Simply stated: if cones are out - we move next day, if no cones are out - there is no move planned.
Whilst we realise that this causes disruption we hope that we can minimise this as much as possible and we would like to thank the people and businesses of Wick for their continued support, co-operation and patience.
