Maritime Experience

 

Donn has held a variety of Maritime positions. These include working as a barge crane operator for bridge construction and heavy lift port operations in Illinois, Florida, South Carolina and Scotland.

 

From 1997-2000 Donn was employed as General Manager of Charleston Shipbuilders Inc. (CSI), Charleston, SC. This shipyard engaged in a variety of maritime projects. CSI performed shipbreaking operations for surplus US Naval vessels and worked on normal ship repair operations. In addition to the regular shipyard duties we set up a stevedore division which also operated a 195,000 sq ft frozen foods warehouse near the docks. This operation loaded frozen chicken products for export to Russia. This division averaged loading 4 000 tons of products per week. The division also received regular shiploads of aluminium ingots, which were offloaded and stored for pickup by a local manufacturing company.  As part of the CSI operations we operated a working shipyard at Mare Island, California. This operation was used for breaking of surplus US Navy ships.  The CSI owners attempted to convert surplus US Naval vessels into commercial floating power plants. One surplus Destroyer was converted to a 70 MW plant and towed to Manaus, Brazil.  In 2001 this plant was powered up and produced power. Unfortunately, political and other problems caused it to be shut down. Even though this project was constructed against the advice of the CSI general manager, it was completed in a 6 month period and produced power.  No other power plant of this size has ever been constructed in such a short time period.  In 2000 the holding company that owned CSI was sold to foreign owners and the shipyard was closed.

 

In 2002 Donn was involved with designing the installation of a 700 Ton Stiffleg Derrick on a large barge in Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf. This unique equipment set-up was used to construct a 7 mile long seawall which was then filled in behind with dredge material to form new land for use as a port area by Bahrain.