An artist’s impression of Seaway Heavy Lifting’s planned 5,000t crane vessel
The vessel is expected to be ready in 2010, and has been planned in order to meet growing demand in the offshore industry for higher capacity vessels, for the construction of platforms and topsides. It will have twice the capacity of the 15-year-old vessel Seaway was set up to run, the 2,500t Stanislav Yudin. The new vessel was designed by GustoMSC, who will also be supplying the 5,000t revolving lift capacity crane.
A key innovation on the new, 183m long, vessel will be a specially designed monohull. Aart Ligterink, marketing and business development manager of Seaway Heavy Lifting, said, “It’s a dual width hull; smaller at the bottom, and wider at the top. This means the vessel can be ballasted down for heavier lifts to gain the necessary stability. On lighter lifts, less draft is required, making the vessel more manoeuvrable. For sailing, the vessel shall be at its shallow draft and can achieve its transit speed of 14 knots.”
The vessel features Class 3 dynamic positioning, and will provide accomadation for 395 people.
The venture partners will contribute $110m of equity to fund the orders, split evenly between them. The remainder of the funding will come from debt in the joint venture, underwritten by ING and covered by the Dutch government’s export credit scheme, Atradius.
An artist’s impression of Seaway Heavy Lifting’s planned 5,000t crane vessel SHL vessel impression
