Towing ropes for Arctech icebreakers
Maritime ropes producer and supplier, Lankhorst Ropes, has supplied Arctic vessel builder Arctech Helsinki Shipyard Inc with steel wire towing ropes for three new vessels.
They will be used as icebreaking supply and emergency operations ships operating in seas off the far east of Russia and the Gulf of Finland.
The emergency and rescue vessel, NB 508 Baltika, is being built for the Russian Ministry of Transport. While the NB 506 Vitus Bering and NB 507 Aleksey Chirikov, high capability multi-functional icebreaking supply vessels, are for Russian shipping company Sovcomflot.
Lankhorst has supplied each of the NB 506 Vitus Bering and NB 507 Aleksey Chirikov with 1,000m of 66mm diameter steel wire rope. The ropes have a minimum breaking load (MBL) of 310Mt. The NB 508 Baltika will use 700m of 58mm diameter rope with 240Mt MBL.
The steel wire ropes feature an independent wire rope core, providing greater strength and stability to the rope than a fibre core. As well as towing, the galvanised rope can also be used for multiple other offshore applications.
Two of the vessels, NB 506 Vitus Bering and NB 507 Aleksey Chirikov, will support the Sakhalin-1 Arkutun-Dagi oil and gas field in the Sea of Okhotsk, far east Russia.
The ships’ main tasks will be to protect the oil and gas rigs from ice accumulation, provide supplies and transport crews, as well as oil spill recovery, firefighting, ocean towing, stand-by and rescue. The ships and their equipment will have to perform in temperatures of minus 35 °C, waves up to 18m in height and wind speeds exceeding 140 kilometres per hour.
Once delivered, NB 508 Baltika’s operations will include icebreaking, rescue and oil spill recovery in the Gulf of Finland.
