Germans bolster sea rescue service
Two new state of the art boats are being built at German shipyards as part of an effort to modernise the already impressive fleet of Bremen based sea rescue service DGzRS and mark its 150th anniversary.
Just weeks after ordering the first of a new class of 28m search and rescue cruisers for delivery next year from Fassmer Werft in Berne on the Weser, the DGzRS announced it had also booked a new 10.1m volunteer manned sea rescue lifeboat from Tamsen Maritim Shipyard in Rostock on the Baltic.
They will both enter service mid 2015 when the DGzRS celebrates 150 years of saving lives at sea and are part of what the service described as a “constant modernisation” of its fleet of 60 cruisers and coastal lifeboats.
The keel for the smaller of the two boats, SRB 65, was being laid in Rostock in early March. It is the first new DGzRS ship to be built at the Tamsen yard, which in 2012 modified the biggest boat in the rescue service’s fleet, the 46m long Hermann Marwede. The newbuilding will be a modified version of existing 9.5m Class DGzRS sea rescue boats, nineteen of which have proved their mettle in extreme conditions over the years. The latest was delivered in 2006.
The newest boat, like its sister ships, will draw 0.96m and be capable of taking off 26 people. It will also have a Cummins engine of Type QSB 6.7 380 ID, rated 280kW at 3,000 u/min to provide 18 knots – compared to the Cummins 6 BTA 5.9 M, 235kW engine versions providing the same speeds on her predecessors. With all-round fendering for difficult alongside operations, the all aluminium boat will be self-righting and demonstrate excellent seakeeping, manoeuverability and heavy collision resistant characteristics, said the DGzRS.
At 27.9m, the as yet unnamed DGzRS search and rescue cruiser currently known as SK 35 will be almost three times the size of the volunteer lifeboats. This boat and its successors will eventually replace six older 27.5m Class boats built between 1984 and 1993.
The hull of the 6.2m wide SK 35, drawing 2m and displacing 120 tonnes, has undergone testing at the Hamburg Ship Model Basin HSVA. The vessel and its 8m tender will be of aluminium and self-righting. The cruiser will boast two MTU 16V2000 M72, each of 1,440kW at 2,250 rpm, providing 24 knots.
The 28m class is the third newly developed class for DGzRS in recent years and will follow the new 20m Class begun in 2008 and the 36.5m Class begun in 2011. All the boats involved have been built by Fassmer, including the latest 20m Class search and rescue cruiser SK34, now in service as Pidder Lüng. It is driven by a Caterpillar C 32 V12 main engine.
By Tom Todd
