Massive Navy hospital ship to arrive in Mobile Fat Tuesday for repairs

MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. (WPMI) — "Well, it's large and it's white, and it has a big red cross all over... on the tops and the sides, you're not going to be able to miss it."

It's a Navy ship...The USNS Comfort. And unlike other Navy ships that visit Mobile during Mardi Gras, this one will be around for a while... here, at Alabama Shipyard.

"It's the largest project we've done to date in the three years we've been here, both revenue-wise and schedule.

Alabama Shipyard has been awarded a nearly 30 million dollar contract to dry dock and overhaul the Comfort. Ryan Schnoor is the senior project manager at the yard and says this job is different than any other they've tackled.

"It's a hospital ship. It's a thousand-man floating hospital. Typically the other ones we have done different class ships within the Navy. But this one being a hospital ship, it's got two different departments on top. It's the people that run the boat, and this you've got doctors, Navy doctors on the hospital side... nearly 12 hundred people that operate this vessel"

Schnoor says it'll take Alabama Shipyard about 150 days to complete the renovation... and it won't begin the right way. The Comfort will be refurbished in Alabama's Shipyard's massive dry dock, which is currently occupied by another Navy vessel, the USNS Gordon, a military vehicle transport ship undergoing repairs. And when it begins, the Comfort's overhaul will put a lot of local people to work.

"We're gonna run the gamut of what we're gonna do on this job and we'll bring in a lot of people. Probably upwards around 350 to 400 people working on this job here at the yard."

"It's a really big win for us and the city of Mobile."

A bit of recent history... The USNS Comfort was stationed in New York City from March until April of 2020 to help combat that city's Coronavirus pandemic.