German newbuild offers pollution control
A new multi-purpose coastal protection workboat being built for delivery to north German authorities this year will double up as a pollution control vessel.
Work on the boat began last August at the SET shipbuilding facility on the Elbe in eastern Germany. It is expected to be delivered in autumn to the government-owned NLWKN agency in Norden in Lower Saxony. No cost details have been revealed.
The NLWKN is responsible for coastal and marine protection and also measurement and monitoring as well as flood control and river and state-owned port management along the German Baltic and North Sea coasts and in local mudflats.
NLWKN spokeswoman Herma Heyken told Maritime Journal work on the new workboat was progressing well and was on target. She reported that for work tackling incidents involving oil and other hazardous materials the boat would have a built-in LAMOR brush retrieval system or, alternatively, side-mounted LAMOR cassettes. LAMOR is the Finland-based international marine concern Larsen Marine Oil Recovery.
The boat will also have built-in collection tanks for 100-150m3, a special slow drive system for oil collection at 1-2 knots speed and a range of safety and protection equipment.
Crewed by three, it will be of about 35m in length and about 8m wide drawing maximum 1.6m and will have a free deck area of 5x20m and a 100 ton load capacity along with a loading ramp.
Heyken reported that no details of engine type or manufacturer were as yet available however maximum engine performance has been put at a specific 2 x 375kW.
Heyken did say that the newbuilding would be similar to, if a little smaller than, another pollution control and multi-purpose workboat already in the NLWKN fleet – the 39.3m long Leyhörn. Built in 2001 by Fassmer Werft, that boat is powered by two MAN D2842 LE Diesels of total 750kW developing 11 knots over two fixed propellers and is one of seven workboats currently serving with the NLWKN.
The pollution combat trail has in addition been blazed for Lower Saxony’s new all-rounder by the 39.15m Haithabu, also built at SET. It went into service in 2014 for the NLWKN’s sister governmental agency WKN-SH up the coast in Husum in Schleswig-Holstein.
That sophisticated multi-purpose workboat was designed mainly for coastal and river monitoring duties but also has an additional oil combat function and carries a system for the recovery and storage of spilled diesel or oil.
Haithabu’s recovery system is also from LAMOR. Equipment is located on both sides of the boat and there are four tanks to store oil-contaminated water with a total capacity of 240 tons. When deployed in this oil-combat mode, the boat draws 2.6m and has a speed of 8-10 knots.
By Tom Todd
