Following successful sea trails on Southampton Water, ‘Iceni Venture’ was handed over to Iceni Marine Services, based in Lowestoft on 27 February.
Prior to the vessel commencing work on a significant O&M contract, ‘Iceni Venture’ was sailed up the River Thames and moored at St. Katharine Docks, Tower Bridge as part of the industry event organised by Iceni Marine Services.
Iceni Marine Services Director, Richard Thurlow comments: “Today is a milestone for Iceni Marine Services – bringing our new first of class 23m Iceni Venture into the heart of the City of London.
With ‘Iceni Pride’, our 14m rapid response vessel also on display, we will provide our guests with a real insight into the offshore wind industry and also demonstrate the quality of the Iceni fleet.”
The Iceni Venture is an all-new South Cat 23m and has benfitted from the extensive testing programme carried out to by South Boats to understand the benefits and limitations of various hull forms and how they perform.
Ben Colman representing South Boats IOW : “Many of the existing hull forms demonstrated peaks of performance in one area but tended to have dramatic limitations in another. Iceni Venture is the first in class crew transfer vessel to address this and promises to deliver a new benchmark in performance. In addition, this design has been fully tank tested to optimise sea-keeping, running trim, fuel efficiency and performance.”
Iceni Venture will carry 12 technicians alongside three crew members to and from wind farm developments in UK and European waters. She is South Boats’ first to employ a controllable pitch propeller using Servogear, and has achieved sprint speeds of up to 32 knots in recent sea trials.
The Iceni Venture and sister vessel Iceni Vengeance (due to be launched in later this month) will expand the Iceni fleet of South Catamarans to six.