Launch of most advanced subsea trenching vessel

In September DEME, the Belgian dredging, environmental and marine engineering group, launched what it describes as the world’s most advanced subsea cable installation and trenching vessel, ‘Living Stone’, at the LaNaval shipyard close to Bilbao, Spain. The vessel will be deployed by DEME’s Dutch subsidiary Tideway in the offshore renewable energy market.

The vessel is engineered with the latest innovations. It is equipped with two turntables below deck, each having a 5000 tonne cable capacity. Together the turntables can carry and transport more than 200 km of cable, all of which can be installed in a single trip. Deck space of 3500 sq m means there is room for a revolutionary cable handling system with innovative and reliable cable handling tools for cable ends, connections and cable protection systems. Furthermore, the ‘Living Stone’ can be equipped with a third carousel above deck with an additional load capacity of 2000 tonne and a 600 tonne crane.

The system was developed in-house by Tideway to enables the vessel to install cables faster and more efficiently in longer lengths and with less offshore joints than any other cable installation vessel.

The cable layer will be serving transport and installation projects as well as offshore power cable installations, interconnectors for the future European Supergrid amongst others.

The ‘Living Stone’ features DP3 (‘dynamic positioning 3’) capability and has been designed as an environmentally friendly vessel with dual fuel engines with LNG as the primary fuel.

The boat can accommodate a crew of up to 100. It is scheduled to be delivered in the second quarter of 2017 and will head to its first project at the Merkur offshore wind farm in Germany, 45 km north of Borkum in the North Sea, for the installation of inter array cables. It will also be deployed for cable installation at the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea Project One in the UK.