Damen officially launched the Bibby WaveMaster 1 service operations vessel (SOV) at its Galati shipyard in Romania on 24 March.
This is the first of Damen’s purpose-built SOVs with walk-to-work (W2W) capability, and will be deployed by its owner Bibby Marine Services to support forthcoming offshore wind construction and O&M projects in the North Sea.
Stephen Blaikie , Chief Executive Officer, Bibby Marine Services, 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, said: “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.
“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.”