Eden Rose, the second of Tidal Transit’s fleet of windfarm service vessels, was launched on 30 March 2012 by its Spanish boat builder, Mercurio Plastics. Like its sister Ginny Louise, it is a state-of-the-art, purpose designed vessel for use by companies involved in the planning, development and construction of offshore wind farms in the Greater Wash and southern North Sea.

Eden Rose is built to exactly the same specification as its sister vessel Ginny Louise, that specification being far higher than that of those vessels currently being used for the same purpose in UK coastal waters. MCA Cat 1 coding and 10,000 litre fuel tanks allow the vessels to work up to 150 miles offshore, which is well within the range of the UK’s forthcoming Round 3 offshore wind farms. Each vessel provides four crew members and twelve passengers with comfortable beds, galley, bathroom, internet access and entertainment facilities, allowing wind farm engineers and support technicians to live and work offshore for up several days at a time.

Being of rugged GRP construction enables Tidal Transit’s vessels to operate in rough seas – a major advantage when working in the North Sea. Twin V12 MAN engines facilitate speeds of up to 27 knots when carrying twelve passengers, the crew, and their on-board cargo. Massive cargo decks fore and aft can accommodate up to 10,000kg of tools, equipment and spares, and the Guerra crane on the fore deck has a lifting capacity of 1,025kg at 6.9m which caters for long reach loading and unloading. Cranes can be be deployed for camera surveys and grab sampling.

Leo Hambro, Tidal Transit’s Commercial Director, is enthusiastic about the company’s future, saying, “The level of offshore wind farm activity off the East Coast is amazing, and I believe that the constantly increasing demand will quickly enable us expand our fleet further by a further eight vessels during the next 2 years.”

Eden Rose is now on route to the UK with an expected arival date of 18 April 2012. Once here she will go straight into operation on a short charter for RES Offshore based in Grimsby servicing meteological masts over 60 miles from shore, before going on show at Seaworks International in Southampton [22 -24 May 2012].

Chris Holden, O&M Manager of RES commenting on the charter said, “This is the second time we have chartered Tidal Transit’s new fleet of vessels and are encouraged about their ability to provide a very comfortable and safe transit and most importantly transfer to offshore platforms.”

Roger Smith Operations Manager at Port of Grimsby East commented, “We would be very pleased to welcome vessels of this size to Grimsby on a longer term basis once the Grimsby Fish Dock lock improvements have been completed.”