Mooring-Buoy Systems at Diego Garcia Pol Pier

The U.S. Navy Construction Forces have installed two buoy-mooring systems at Diego Garcia POL Pier. These buoys are to assist the mooring and maneuvering of capital class vessels berthing at the pier. The operational requirements, installation constraints and environmental considerations required the use of propellant embedment anchors and a high tension shallow water configuration. Hardware components were acquired from Government inventories, inspected, preassembled and shipped to Diego Garcia. On the island, Naval Construction Forces (Underwater Construction Team 2) surveyed the installation sites, placed embedment anchors and connected mooring legs on the sea floor. Connections to the buoys were made by sinking the buoys and making the final hookup underwater. The buoys were refloated, establishing a pretension condition in the chains to reduce the buoy excursion under ship loads.