Page 14: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2012)

14Maritime Reporter & Engineering News PROFILEVESSEL OF THE MONTH Bourbon 300Bourbon Ends One Series, Starts Another in ChinaBourbon maintained its steady marchforward to offshore dominance with a unique naming ceremony in China, which included the naming of BourbonLiberty 254, the last of 54 vessel to be de- livered of the Bourbon Liberty 200 se- ries; and the naming of Bourbon Liberty301, the first vessel of the Bourbon Lib- erty 300 series of 20 AHTS. The new Bourbon Liberty 300 AHTS has been designed and built by Sinopa- cific Zhejiang Co. of China. The vessel boasts a larger deck area and liquid ca- pacity, driven by the need to service in- creasing number of deepwater energy projects. Thanks to the innovative diesel electric propulsion system, this AHTS uses less fuel than vessels with conven- tional direct drive systems and as a result produces less pollution. With two az- imuths thrusters and two bowthrusters, a fully redundant class II dynamic posi-tioning system provides good maneuver- ability. In addition, this AHTS is classed FiFi I and cleanship to satisfy more strin-gent future environmental requirements. Continued SuccessAbout a year and a half ago the groupannounced its BOURBON 2015 Lead-ership Strategy? and the ordering of three new series of vessels from Sinopacific shipyards. Bourbon Liberty 301 is the first vessel of the first series to be deliv- ered. Delivery of the Bourbon Liberty 301 is an important milestone for Bour- bon,? said Christian Lefèvre, CEO, Bour- bon. Our strategy of building standardized vessels in large quantities, as exemplified in the Bourbon Liberty 100 and 200 series, has been a tremen-dous success.? The first Bourbon Liberty, Bourbon Liberty 101, was delivered to the Group in February 2008. Four years later, all 76 Bourbon Liberty vessels (54 Bourbon Liberty 200 and 22 Bourbon Liberty 100)are operational.We operate a fleet of 76 Bourbon Lib- erty vessels worldwide,? said Rodolphe Bouchet, VP Business Management for Marine Services. According to Bouchet the 19 remaining vessel in the 300 series will be delivered by 2014. Deeper Waters Demand Bigger Capacity Bourbon Liberty 300 vessels are the extension of Bourbon Liberty 200 ves- sels. They provide clients with a larger deck space and the capacity to carry moreliquid mud and bulk products. At the same time, they use the same key features as the Bourbon Liberty 200 series (Class2 Dynamic Positioning system, maingensets, azimuth thrusters),? said Olivier Daniel, Bourbon Newbuilding Managing Director. The 300 series is an extension of the Cleanship Class AHTS, and further vindication of the push to service thehighly demanding and environmentally stringent offshore oil and gas client. Bourbon decided voluntarily to apply this Cleanship notation to the Bourbon Lib-erty 300 series even though the dead- weight of the vessels does not require it. Sinopacific Shipbuilding The event to deliver the first of the 300 series ? named Bahtera Mulia ? was sim- ilarly triumphant for the privately owned Chinese shipbuilding company Sinopa- cific Shipbuilding Group's Zhejiang Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., as it highlights the first time that the company com- pletely designed and built a vessel of this type. The delivery of the SPA 80 Diesel Electric DPII 80mt AHTS marks the completion of the transition from joint toindependent design that the OSV designcapability of Sinopacific has, breaking the situation that preliminary designs ofOSVs were mostly monopolized by Eu-ropean, American and Singaporean com- panies. Bouchet noted that designing the vessel where it is built has certain strate- gic advantages, particularly in regards to efficiency of construction. Today, Sinopacific reports that it has mastered the entire design chain rangingfrom the front-end concept design andbasic design to the back-end detailed de-sign and production design, dramaticallyimproving its overall planning factors over the OSV construction project, and enabling it to more quickly respond withsolutions. After nearly four years of de- sign and research, in addition to SPA 80, SINOPACIFIC has also independently developed a series of OSV products such as the SPP 17, SPP 35 and SPU1000.The SPA 80 was designed by SDA, a design company of SINOPACIFIC. It is a small, high-tech AHTS. Compared with the same type of AHTS designed by for- eign design companies, the SPA 80 has not only absorbed their advantages, but also added many of the world's most ad- vanced design and technical features. Its indicators, such as safety, reliability, ma- neuverability, operational efficiency, en- vironmental friendliness have reached world class status. In order to improve its environmental performance, the SPA 80 innovatively uses the fuel tank double hull protection design on the small AHTS to reduce the risk of environmental pol- lution caused by accidents. In addition,the SPA 80 has been added with the self- recovering function of oil slicks on the sea, and has obtained the Oil Recovery Ship certificate. Most importantly, the SPA 80 has also obtained the BV Clean Ship certificate for its foresight in meet- ing more stringent environmental re- quirements.Specification of SPA 80 Length, o.a..........................................................65.8m Breadth, molded.....................................................16m Depth, molded.........................................................6m Design, Draft........................................................4.3m Max. Draft..........................................................5.07m Generator power.............................................6,000 kwDeadweight......................................................1,800mt Service speed...................................................12 knots Bollard pull...........................................................80mt The first (of 20) of the 300 series ...... and the 54th and last 200 series. (All images copyright Bourbon)