Page 14: of Marine Technology Magazine (October 2013)

Van Oord ordered a new cable laying vessel. The ship will be built at Damen Shipyards Galati in Romania and will be completed at the end of 2014. The vessel is intended for the installation of electricity cables for offshore wind farms. Van Oord is making preparations for the Gemini offshore wind farm which will be constructed 60 km to the north of Schiermonnikoog, one of the Dutch Wadden Islands. The cable-laying vessel will be deployed at that site, among many others. The vessel will be a multipurpose vessel measuring 120 x 28 m with a dynamic positioning system. It will be equipped with a cable carousel of more than 5,000 metric tons and a heavy crane that will enable it to lay heavy and long export cables. On board 90 people can be accommodated. The cable- laying vessel forms part of the Van Oord strategy to offer a complete package for the construction of offshore wind farms as an EPC contractor. The new cable layer is based on the Damen Offshore Carrier, a new multipurpose vessel design with a ß ush working deck, Heavy Lift or RoRo transport as well as offshore installation capabilities suitable for multiple markets. To this purpose, a large number of (offshore) installation equipment can be mounted on the vessel and the design can be adapted to create a dedicated ship, such as the vessel desired by Van Oord. In the Yard Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) received an order for construction of a wide-area seabed research vessel from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technol- ogy (JAMSTEC). The vessel will be designed to advance wide-area research into seaß oor resources, its comprehen- sive research capabilities to include elucidation of mineral and ore deposit origins and formation conditions, and will also enable contributions to disaster prevention research. Construction will start at MHIÕs Shimonoseki Shipyard & Machinery Works in Yamaguchi Prefecture this year, with completion scheduled for March 2016. The ship will mea- sure 100 x 19 m with gross tonnage near 5,500 tons. To efÞ -ciently conduct survey research of ocean ß oor resources, it will be capable of operating such state-of-the-art equipment as a seismic research system for investigating crustal struc- ture, large piston corers and a seaß oor-mounted excavator for collecting seabed samples, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Sea speed will be approximately 12 knots, with a crew capacity of 65. The vessel on order will also be outÞ tted with a ma- rine research laboratory enabling swift analysis of collected samples without any time-lag deterioration. MHI to Build RV for JAMSTEC Van Oord Contracts Damen for DP2 Cable Laying Vessel October 201314 MTRMTR #8 (1-17).indd 14MTR #8 (1-17).indd 1410/15/2013 3:56:53 PM10/15/2013 3:56:53 PM