First of four hybrid daughter craft launched

Christened Grace Darling after a lighthouse keeper’s daughter who risked her life to save sailors from a shipwreck in 1838, the vessel is the first of four hybrid craft developed by Chartwell Marine and being built by Alicat Workboats for North Star.

All four vessels will be named after ’iconic women’ from the northeast of England – ’to reflect the firm’s first offshore wind projects being supported out of the region, as well as its ongoing commitment to hiring locally and investing in the area’s supply chain companies’, says North Star.

The hybrid boats will be used to transfer in-field crew and technicians between their work on the wind turbines and the service operation vessel (SOV) on which they live during the period of the maintenance pof remedial work.

“We are very pleased to have officially launched the Grace Darling and bring the world’s first offshore wind hybrid propulsion daughter craft to market. There is a long history of iconic women hailing from the region, and we wanted to enhance their legacy by naming our new green fleet in their memory as well as commemorate our local roots,” said North Star CEO Matthew Gordon.

Once all four craft are delivered, North Star will have the largest daughter craft fleet in Europe, with 67 assets, it says. The company employs 1,300 people at sites in Lowestoft, Newcastle and Aberdeen, in the north of Scotland.

Grace Darling was officially launched at the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club in Lowestoft.

The VIP event was attended by a number of the UK’s leading offshore wind developers, after the daughter craft was delivered ahead of schedule to further performance and field operations readiness, prior to the firm receiving the planned early delivery of its service operations vessel mothership to the Port of Tyne early next year.

This will include a performance analysis and enhancements programme on the daughter craft, as well as crew familiarisation.