PUZZLED beachgoers in Estepona have spent the past few days squinting at an unusual shape sliding slowly across the horizon – a vast floating platform that looks more like a drifting building than a ship.
The 150-metre structure, flanked by tugboats, has left expats and locals alike perplexed by its very non-nautical, suspension bridge-like design.
Sleuths have finally managed to identify the ship and its purpose – which is not a vessel at all but the steel deck of the future Anne de Bretagne bridge in Nantes.
Built in Italy over the space of six months, the 2,200-tonne frame is being hauled more than 5,000 kilometres to the mouth of the Loire in one of the largest logistical operations of its kind in Europe.
The giant deck – 42 metres wide and as tall as an eight-storey block when viewed side-on – left the port of Monfalcone on 26 October after engineers dismantled access roads and reinforced quaysides to move it. A web of temporary support cables keeps the structure rigid as it creeps west at around 6 knots.
The convoy has already threaded the Adriatic and the wider Mediterranean and is now edging past the Costa del Sol towards the Strait of Gibraltar.
Once in France, the deck will be lifted into place alongside the existing bridge in Nantes, tripling its width to create a so-called ‘pont-place’ wide enough for tram lines, traffic and pedestrians without demolishing the old structure.
Moving the piece in one enormous block avoids an estimated 100 road transports and saves thousands of tonnes of concrete, steel and CO2 compared with building a new bridge from scratch.
If conditions hold, the platform is expected to reach the Loire estuary between 20 November and 19 December, with its tug currently scheduled to arrive on 1 December at around 6pm.
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