IN its bid to upgrade jetties around the country, the Fiji Roads Authority is including the replacement of bigger and stronger bollards to cater for the bigger ships that transport people and goods from the maritime islands.
A bollard is a post on the jetty, about half a meter in diameter made with concrete with a stainless steel bar around, which mooring rope from the boat are tied around. This holds the boat in place.
FRA CEO Neil Cook said the existing bollards are not the right shape for the size of the ships that frequent the jetties.
“We find that at a lot of the jetties, what we call bollards that ships tie their ropes up on to, often are not the right size for the size of the ships that are coming on using them now,” Mr Cook said.
“The ships are too big and will just rip that bollard out of the concrete so we’re doing upgrades on that.”
FRA’s capital works manager Ian Hunter explained that the upgrading of the bollards will last longer given the trend of bigger boats now.
“It seems that there’s a trend for the boats to be getting bigger and bigger, and so that has huge increase of loads in every aspect of the jetty,” Mr Hunter said.
“Our old construction just isn’t up to par to those bigger boats now.”
He said some of the smaller jetties like Yasawa I Rara didn’t have bollards for big ships because only very smaller boats used them, but where the roll-on roll-offs particularly came in, like the Natovi jetty, big bollards were required.
“Natovi jetty has new bollards for bigger ships now. There’s work coming on later this year or next year at the Savusavu jetty and Nabouwalu jetty later on so they require the renewal of the bollards as well.
“Bollards are important and the right size too otherwise how else could one keep a ship where you want it to be. When they put the ramp down, they don’t want the ships moving around so the bollard helps put the ship in position.”
