Refloat dragon boat with salvage airbags

“Wanzhou Pavilion on water”called Caifang in Chinese, is a kind of entertaining dragon boat with exquisite decorative Chinese dragon and one two-floor-pavilion. That traditional paddled long boat was rebuilt by a few entrepreneurs from wenzhou to show historic occupations of local people. The dragon boat weighs 40 tons, measured by 35 meters long ,4 meters wide and 4.5 m high. The total investment of the boat reaches 500,000 USD.

The boat made his virgin show in Wenzhou dragon boat festival then it sunk in the next year. The suspicious report said that once the watercraft was moored in Huichang Lake, the local dragon boat training base, some speedboats passed by rudely that caused splashed water rushed into boat. The witness said the boat sunk to lake bed in 10 minutes.

Inspired by Eversafe salvage airbags the owner decided to salvage his boat by his own team. To salvage a 40 tons boat is not difficult but considering the fragile boat structure and budget the job was not going on smoothly. Total 8 pieces floating airbags with 1.8 m diameters and 12 m length were deployed to re float the sunken boat.

Divers made the guiding rope get through mud under the boat first, then pull one airbag across boat bottom. Two hours later, two airbags were place in right position. By inflating the airbags rise 1/3 of boat out of water slowly. The left job became to be easy. When six pieces bags were settled well and inflated the whole boat rise up to water surface.

This salvage job is totally performed by amateurs, fish men, divers.,etc. It took five days to complete the job and the whole cost of salvage is 20,000 USD only, according to the operation team leader. With marine salvage airbags, the sausage shape balloons, people can salvage small boat by themselves if they know how to use airbags.