Last month Airtricity purchased Fluor's stake in the project and the company is now a 100% owned subsidiary of Airtricity, the renewables arm of Scottish and Southern Energy.

The Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm involves the installation of 140 Siemens 3.6MW wind turbines located around two sand banks known as Inner Gabbard and The Galloper in the North Sea, off the Suffolk Coast.

Onshore construction activities will commence in early July at Sizewell. Construction offshore will commence mid-2009, with completion expected by the end of 2010.

WindCat Workboats is a leading suppler of offshore utility vessels and this contract will bring their fleet to over 20 vessels ,with building slots booked for the next 3 years. The fleet consists of the MK1 and MK2 vessels and now, a new MK3 class, the first of which is the recently delivered WindCat 9. The vessels to be built for Greater Gabbard will be MK3s.

WindCat 9 is 18m LOA with a beam of 6.1m and driven by twin 750 hp Volvo marine diesels which take it to 25 knots. Special attention has been paid to the comfort of the passenger with a large lounge area featuring entertainment systems such as Playstation 3 and Wii to keep technicians occupied on their trips to the wind farm. These vessels have been designed to operate on wind farms where the transit times are between 1 and 2 hours.

WindCat Workboats continuously works on new innovations, and a new MK4 series will start into production later in 2008. This 24m LOA vessel will reach speeds of 30 knots plus , with the design tailored to wind farms further offshore and to provide increased accessibility in difficult sites.

WindCat Workboats operates a safety first policy and all crewmen are trained and certificated up to and above the required level. The vessels have been audited by Shell, Vestas, Siemens, Van Oord, GE, Repower, and other major players in the offshore wind farm field.

Devon based marine surveyors MECAL have been involved in the MCA survey and certification of the WindCat fleet since early 2004 and have issued certificates to nine WindCats. The vessels are in compliance with MCA SCV2 category 2, carrying 12 passengers and three crew up to 60 miles offshore.

SCV2 category 2, carrying 12 passengers and three crew out to 60 miles offshore. Presently WindCat Workboats has vessels working in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. This summer one of the WindCat vessels will start operating in Belgium on the Thornton Bank wind farm.