Photo: Miho Bakalić

PINNA NOBILIS SSMA-19 – one anchor for all seas. Small, almost imperceptible in a bed of Posidonia oceanica – the lungs of the sea – yet strong enough to resist the force of fierce winds and huge waves, keeping gigantic boats safely moored. Neither sand nor mud with hard rock below are a problem for it; it will adapt to any sea and river bed. A mooring system that will replace the concrete block, called deadweight anchor. Three years ago, this was just a sea lover’s vision. Today, this visionary is holding a tangible and real anchor for the future.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”, says Gordan Župa, the owner of Dubina Inženjering, a renowned company with 20 years of experience in the construction of mooring systems and other types of underwater works. Dubina is a pioneer in installing ecological mooring systems in Croatia; they constructed the first permanent mooring in Komiža in 2008, which was followed by the one in Dubrovnik, in front of the Kaše breakwater, a year later, and then those at ACI Marina Pula and marina Agana. In the bays of the Lastovo Nature Park, they installed environmentally friendly modern mooring systems that do not destroy meadows of Posidonia oceanica. “France has similar anchors, but theirs are only intended for sandy bottoms or those made of loose sediment. In the Dinaric Karst area, the base is solid rock that supports the sediment of limited thickness, and here is where the problem lies, in terms of the bearing capacity envisaged in the project. The sand deposit is too shallow to anchor such a system, and the rock is too deep”, says Župa. Permanent mooring systems are adapted to a particular type of sea bottom: the so-called cohesive soil anchor is used for rocky sea beds, the so-called Manta-Ray for sandy seafloors.
And then, out of dire necessity, Dalmatian defiance, expertise and experience, an idea emerged about a mooring system that could be used in the real conditions of the Adriatic basin – which is a combination of sediment and rocky mass –and which would be would be suitable for variable characteristics of vessels and wave fields, and capable of anchoring boats and other vessels up to 30 m in length, which, in total, make up 80% of vessels in the sea and inland waterways transport. “My idea was a dreamer’s idea, but experts from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy (FGAG) in Split have turned my vision into reality”, this is what Župa says about this partnership of the real and the scientific sector. The vision and the partnership were recognised by the EU, which awarded the project titled PINNA NOBILIS SSMA-19 a grant worth €333,000 under the programme “Increasing the development of new products and services arising from R&D activities”.