The world’s first daughter craft based on surface effect ship (SES) technology, ‘Sea Puffin’, has started two months of sea trials at Vattenfall’s Horns Rev 1 and Ørsted’s Horns Rev 2 wind farms.
Sea Puffin’s design aims to enable developers to operate daughter craft vessels in difficult weather conditions, which will be important as wind farm installations move further offshore.
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The 15 meter long SES daughter craft uses an air cushion for active motion damping, leading to access capabilities beyond conventional daughter craft vessels, whilst reducing fuel consumption and enhancing crew and passenger comfort during transit. The compact size also enables vessel deployment using a conventional 15 tonne davit crane fitted onto a mothership. The vessel is designed for launch and recovery operations, however the Sea Puffin will be operated from port during this initial phase of testing and operation.
The sea trials, conducted by the vessel owner WindPartner, will demonstrate that the ‘Sea Puffin 1’ can operate in an operational wind farm environment in preparation for charter and full commercial operation in mid-August.
The vessel is designed by Norwegian company ESNA and has received initial support from the Carbon Trust’s industry-led collaborative research, development and deployment programme in 2016.
Trygve H Espeland, Naval Architect and co-founder of ESNA, mentioned:
The reduction of fuel consumption compared to other daughter craft or crew transfer vessels will help the operators of wind farms to significantly reduce emissions and the environmental footprint of O&M activities for many years to come.
WindPartner and ESNA have agreed to build a series of this vessel type over the next few years.
