According to the present invention, a solution is provided whereby rather than directly towing a pipe (30) from a tug (11), a cable (23) is suspended between two surface vessels (10, 11), and it is from this cable (23) that the pipe (30) itself is suspended at a plurality of points. By means of this arrangement, stress and fatigue is absorbed by the cable (23) rather than the pipe (30), that the pipe (30) arrives at its installation point with a correspondingly smaller loss in fatigue life.