Sea Installer

 Another offshore construction crane ship arrived in Halifax today (August 5), The Sea Installer will be working on the Vineyard Wind project from the staging base at the Woodside dock on the Dartmouth side of the harbour.

 The ship was built by COSCO (Nantong) Shipyard Company in 2012 and is registered at 27,584 gt, 5,000 dwt. The ship has just emerged from the Maasvlakte shipyard in the Netherlands where a new Huisman crane was installed. The new unit has a Safe Working Load of 1600 tonnes at 95 meters boom length and 700 tonnes at 115 meters boom length, and replaces a 900 tonne maximum capacity unit. 

It is also fitted with accommodation for sixty, a helideck, a large open cargo deck, a moon pool and thrusters to provide a Dynamic Poisitioning DP2 rating.  If that were not enough it is also equipped with four 82.5 meter legs that allow it to spud down and jack up with a 21,000 tonne capacity (i.e. ship plus cargo).

Companion crane ship Orion sailed Wednesday August 2 [see post] with six more monopiles and transition pieces for the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts. It completed installing the first six wind turbine towers last month. The components for another six towers are on board the ship GPO Grace which has been at anchor in Halifax since July 5.

When completed the project will have 62 turbines and will generate 800 MW of power. (By comparison the Nova Scotia Power Corp thermal generating station at Tuft's Cove, Halifax generates 415 megaWatts (using mostly natural gas). Its three chimneys are each 152 meters high whereas the Vineyard towers are 248 meters high with 107 meter blades.

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