Sharing knowhow in offshore wind construction

Steady as she goes

Heavy lift supervisor Gaynor Horner hails from Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast. He has been lifting around the world for the past 20 years, including lengthy periods in Oman, Dubai, and the North Sea.

These days, you’ll find him on board SEA WORKER, keeping a watchful eye (“Like a hawk”) on every lifting task, but he has also worked with SEA JACK back in 2011, and more recently with SEA INSTALLER during mobilisation in the Netherlands. Continue reading

Report from Gwynt y Môr

By Steen Drue, Project Manager, A2SEA A/S

Turbine installation work at Gwynt y Môr began on April 30 when SEA JACK started work loading components for the very first of 160 turbine locations. Seven weeks later, SEA WORKER departed from Grenaa, Denmark, headed for the port of Mostyn to join the installation teamwork. In June, the two vessels began working ”side-by-side”, although, in reality, they only occasionally pass each other on the water. Continue reading

Customers talk about challenges

With offshore wind developments in the UK currently generating more power than the rest of Europe combined, and a strong pipeline of projects planned for the coming decade, offshore wind has become a major element in the UK energy mix.

In the Irish Sea, home to two of the Round 3 zones, locating a harbour with enough storage capacity to stock huge turbines and foundations, and deep enough for large installation vessels to operate, were two major challenges facing both DONG Energy and RWE. Continue reading

More than meets the eye

To the untrained eye, the jack-up vessels that perform heavy wind farm maintenance and construction work may look pretty much alike. Comparing tech specs seems like a good way to assess what each vessel can do, but appearances and specifications don’t tell the whole story. To find out what really sets one jack-up vessel apart from another, we spoke to Torben Vinkel, Master of SEA WORKER, one of A2SEA’s purpose-built jack-up vessels. Continue reading