Finding out what’s needed

“People started off by using fishing boats and ribs to try to get crew across to the turbine towers.”

Mr Coleman had joined Clive Jeffery’s company just three years before South Boats brought a GRP dive boat to Seawork 2004. The team were approached about a 13m aluminium version. “We found out that Danbrit Ship Management was trying to source a boat for turbine transfers”, explained Mr Coleman.

Collaborating with Danbrit, South Boats set about tailoring this first boat to requirement, at the time a very new step. It was obvious it was going to be a tight learning curve, Mr Coleman told MJ. “I already knew by the time Sirocco was delivered that there were things that would have to be modified, especially the bow fenders.”

However, this first boat gave Mr Coleman and the team valuable insight and South Boats sold another boat almost immediately. “Straight away we were able to incorporate most of the lessons learned from the first build.”

Innovation, though, is an iterative process. “In those early days everyone started looking at radical ideas, but we came back to a simple one, he continued. “What you need is a very hardy, good quality boat. After all, it has to cope with more impact than a pilot boat. At least they get some shelter in the lee of a ship, whereas windfarm support vessels have to take on the full force of the wind, tides and waves.

The year 2007 brought quite a few more orders so it was either grow the company or risk losing the business to others. It was a familiar issue, said Mr Coleman. “We’d had the same problem when the GRP catamarans took off. We simply hadn’t got the tools to ramp up production and lost out, so we were keen not to let that happen again.”

There was also a play of good fortune supporting the company. Its Isle of Wight neighbour Souters had just gone to the wall and South Boats had competed successfully for its police and RNLI refit contracts, “all of which allowed us to expand and keep up with the market, added Mr Coleman. “Although I do occasionally miss knowing exactly what’s going on with all the boats, there’s just so many of them now its hard to keep track.”

More recently South Boats has invested heavily, to the tune of nearly £1m, in R&D, testing out virtually every combination of hulls including swath, hybrids, D-hulls to traditional forms, on 1/12 scale models and in every type of environment.

“We had a surprise, said Mr Coleman, “in that for every hull that had some exceptionally good points, we also saw at least one exceptionally bad point, whereas an all-round boat stood to be generally fine with everything.” Armed with this data from R&D, South Boats can now approach utility companies and show them a hull design suited to the sea state at their particular installation.

“In terms of boat development, a couple of years ago we saw that to be a sustainable manufacturing business, we had to make the vessels as modular and as fast to build as possible.”

The first boat built on this premise was the Abersoch Bay, a prototype for the current 19m and 24m windfarm support boats. It is already successful, with the first six 19m versions going out to Turbine Transfers, Offshore Wind Services BV and Seacat Services. The first 24m version will be delivered next month.