Accidents do happen of course but for wind farm service vessels one critical performance is minimising ‘down time’. This can be measured by:
– the speed of response;
– the speed of repair;
– the repair integrity;
– the facilities required.
The damage seen in the first photo resulted from a collision at speed with a steel edged concrete structure displacing its timber rubbing strake through the force of impact. This created a 10mm by 100mm gash to the forward port hull above the waterline, putting the vessel out of commission.
Within 3 hours after the initial call to CWind, the repair response team from sister company CTruk was already at the vessel. A helpful feature of the CTruk vessel is the ability to carry a very large fuel payload which in this instance enabled fuel from the port tank to be transferred to starboard inducing a list keeping the damaged area clear of the water – no need for expensive and time-dependant slipping!
Using floodlights and safety netting the technicians worked overnight to make good the repair. Once done, the vessel was back to its original strength with no residual weaknesses in the structure.
The incident demonstrated how quickly a composite vessel can be repaired and back on deployment in less than 24 hours. Aluminium vessels would have been equally affected by hitting an 8mm steel plate at speed, and would then have had to be lifted out of the water and welders brought in. That’s neither a quick, nor a cheap thing to do, meaning lost service time, and there would be degradation to the aluminium structure as well.
It was a combination of well thought out design and construction, together with quick and effective support from CWind and CTruk that made this neat turnaround possible. Excellent support is one of the advantages to a close working relationship between CWind and CTruk Boats.
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Offshore WIND staff, May 21, 2012; Image: ctruk