Divers deliver power to remote island monks
Swathe Services of Cornwall in the UK recently undertook the pre-lay survey of a 4km submarine power cable installation between Tenby and Caldey Island in Wales, assisting part of a larger operation to upgrade power supplies to a remote island community of monks in Wales, carried out by Falmouth Divers.
Caldey Island has been inhabited by monks since the 6th Century and much of the medieval priory of the Benedictine monks of the 12th century is still standing. Caldey is now occupied by a small community of Cistercian monks who although living a contemplative life have managed to bring themselves financial independence with the development of a perfume industry and the advent of tourism.
Power was first supplied to the island in the mid-1960’s but modifications and updates were required to maintain the supply of power to this remote community and Falmouth Divers were called in to lay new power cables.
Working from the Grey Bear, a landing craft type vessel provided by Falmouth Divers, Swathe Services conducted a heave compensated Single Beam Echo Sounder (SBES) survey of the proposed cable route. The SBES data was processed on site and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the cable route was produced. On selection of a route, tidal flow measurements were taken to allow the cable lay vessel to plan the course and speed of the lay. During the cable lay Swathe Services provided full course positioning support aboard the cable lay vessel MCS Ailsa and logged the as laid cable position .
Swathe Services were able to provide a complete support service to Falmouth Divers with the utilisation of their extensive pool of survey equipment, which included Odom MKII Single Beam Echo Sounder (SBES), Hemisphere vector DGPS sensor, a Valeport SVP profiler, and a TSS DMS-05 Motion Reference Unit (MRU). Vessel navigation and data acquisition were performed in QINSy v8 hydrographic software.
‘On completion, an excellent as laid cable survey report was produced complete with a suite of drawings presented to a very high quality, said Falmouth Divers project engineer Rob Martin. ‘We were very pleased with the professional and flexible attitude of the Swathe Services site personnel and equally with the consultation and advice provided early in the project that allowed Falmouth Divers to offer a full turn-key package to our client.’
Images for this article - click to enlarge
Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2012. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.
