A purpose-built Service Operations Vessel (SOV) with Walk-to-Work capability
The pioneering Bibby WaveMaster 1, the first of Damen’s purpose-built Service Operations Vessels (SOV) with Walk-to-Work (W2W) capability, was officially launched at Damen Shipyards Galati in Romania on March 24th.
When completed, Bibby Marine Services Limited, part of Bibby Line Group, will deploy the vessel to support forthcoming offshore wind construction and O&M projects in the North Sea.
Stephen Blaikie, Chief Executive Officer, Bibby Marine Services Ltd, said, “This is an important key milestone in the delivery of the vessel. Sea trials will start soon and we will take delivery in August. We are very impressed with the quality of the build and the whole process has gone smoothly.”
Peter Robert, Director Business Development & Market Intelligence at Damen says, “I am honestly convinced that Damen has designed and built the best vessel for the tasks envisaged and which is going to be available on the market as of end of August this year. The combination of Damen and Bibby brings together a significant amount of knowledge, which has resulted in some impressive innovation. Carrying out the integrated HIL simulator analyses of the vessel +DP system + gangway system, in a time domain simulation with the actual controllers connected to it proves, in real life conditions, safe operations in the 2.5 metre Hs required by the tenders – the only vessel currently able to achieve this in fact. Based on this the shipowner can guarantee site specific vessel performance and safe operations.”
