awards support vessel of the year
North Sea Giant started work in the renewables sector but is now contracted to Technip
vessels when working with smaller ones. We saw that a contractor needed to charter two or three vessels to do a simple job, and we wanted to build a ship that could do all the tasks required on its own. Now we have this vessel and we are very happy with it. She can take 8,800 tonnes of deck load, and that gives it a big advantage compared with it competitors.”
The vessel’s first project was the installation of a tidal turbine in the waters off the Orkney Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland. “For obvious reasons, turbines like this are positioned in areas with very powerful tidal flow,” Mr Vik explained. “So it was a very demanding job. “However, North Sea Giant completed the task very quickly. We were working in tides running at between 3 and 7.5 knots without any problems. We even turned the vessel through 180 degrees in a 4-knot tidal stream without losing position.” The ship’s next job needed both cranes. “The 50-tonne crane is more of a ship-to-
ship crane, and deploying the 400-tonne crane is where we make our money, but on job number two, both cranes operated 24/7, with five crane operators, and two crane technicians,” Mr Vik told OSJ. North Sea Giant is characterised by an extremely high level of redundancy and a huge, 400-tonne MacGregor crane – which the company claims is the largest of its type on any vessel. North Sea Giant was built at Spanish shipyard Metalships & Docks and is one of the largest of its type in the world, with an overall length of 160.9m, a beam of 30m and installed power of 22MW-plus. Despite its size, however, Voith Schneider propellers (VSPs) rather than conventional propellers or
thrusters make the vessel
extremely manoeuvrable. The roll-damping properties of the VSPs contribute to making the ship a particularly stable platform on which to carry out subsea construction and other types of work in deep water. As highlighted above, North Sea Giant was
Large crane for big lifts
Cargotec manufactured and installed the 400-tonne semi-active heave-compensated MacGregor crane on North Sea Giant. “We delivered a crane that has the impressive capacity to lift 100 tonnes at its full boom outreach of 34m and can actively heave-compensate a 400-tonne load with a 6m surface heave movement,” said Jon Helle, sales director for advanced load handling.
“Everything about this crane is big; the hook alone weighs 15 tonnes. Its slew
22 I Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference and Awards 2012
bearing is more than 4.8m in diameter and the winch drum exceeds a diameter of 3.5m and is almost 4m wide. It is also fitted with 3km of lifting wire (126mm in diameter). “The crane is so large
that it was
advantageous to locate the winch, hydraulic power unit [HPU] and major hydraulic components below deck. This has the additional advantage of ensuring convenient access to various components during maintenance and repair work.” The crane has a 20-tonne auxiliary
winch with a 35m outreach and twin 10-tonne tugger winches installed on turntable foundations. North Sea Giant is also fitted with a smaller 50-tonne active boost heave-compensated MacGregor offshore crane. “A big ship requires a big crane,” Mr Vik said. “Things are getting heavier and heavier out there. And since the vessel was designed with ultra-deepwater capabilities, we needed lifting capacity with 3,000m of wire deployed.”
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in brief
• extremely high level of redundancy based on low loss concept diesel- electric system
• economical fuel consumption due to diesel-electric powerplant
• high loading capacity on deck
• huge crane capacity of 400 tonnes to 3,000m
• extremely fast manoeuvring response, thanks to Voith Schneider propellers (VSPs)
• active stabilisation using VSPs • bollard pull approximately 200 tonnes
• moonpool 7.2m x 7.2m (can be lengthened by 5m if required) • Comfort class 3 DNV and Clean Design.
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