The world ‘s largest self-propelled jack-up installation vessel, Seajacks Scylla, was officially named today at the company’s Great Yarmouth headquarters in the East of England.
The $250m ship had the traditional bottle of champagne smashed on its hull by its Godmother Akiko Inoue wife of the chairman of Seajacks, Soichi Inoue.
The 23,000 tonne vessel will shortly mobilise for foundation installation work starting in mid March at Highland Group’s 400MW Veja Mate offshore wind project in the German North Sea.
Around 400 industry figures attended the event and toured the Samsung Heavy Industries-built vessel that was delivered from the company’s yard in Geoje, South Korea.
It is the fifth ship in the Seajacks stable.
Seajacks’ CEO Blair Ainslie said Scylla was “superbly built”. The vessel naming marked a proud moment for the company and Great Yarmouth, said Ainslie, which he described as the “epicentre of the flourishing British offshore wind industry”.
“This the latest in our series of monsters and a tremendous feat of design, engineering and construction,” he said.
He added that “today is another milestone in the short history of Seajacks”.
Scylla has 105m long legs, making it able to work in water depths of 65m. Deck space is 5000 square metres and it has a variable load capacity of 8800 tonne which equates to seven 7MW turbines for Round 3 projects.
The crane is a Huisman 1500 tonne leg circling piece of kit able to handle XL monopiles.
The new vessel is a substantial investment by Seajacks’ Japanese owners, Marubeni Corporation and INCJ who took over the business in 2012.
Image: Seajacks Scylla (reNEWS)
