Regarding offshore wind East Coast

McAllister looking for an engineer for a newly aquired OSV for wind power work. Things are moving in that direction. This is good stuff.

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Any details on where it was newly acquired from? Like newly built or GOM bargain? Either way it seems like a smart business development move for any established East coast operators.

No other details other than"Newly aquired" , just popped up on a site I follow, did mention equal time.Thatā€™s about it. Just speculating on my part, thinking a GOM bargain refitted for that work, lotta shit for cheap on sale rather than newbuild. Just announced on the local news the first tower is up.

profit on the pain of the GoM. thats a good point. asset prices on OSVs have probably never been lower. A lot of good new equipment out there since the oil majors dont like to reuse good stuff to begin with.

Just glad some stuff is not sitting idle and jobs are created. Everybody loses when any boat is tied to the dock and not moving. Hope whoever is interested buys more good boats that are sitting still and puts our people back to work.

Hopefully they donā€™t try the old trick of buying the cheapest shit they can find and jury rig it so it can ā€œjust barelyā€ perform the task it is intended to do.

Anything said about what kind of ā€œwind power workā€?
If ā€œWalk to Workā€ support, DP2 capability is required. (4-point mooring only in benign areas)

Lot of newer DP2 equipped vessels for sale on the international market, but they would not meet Jones Act criteria.

Bug, I was thinking the same thing regarding that concept regarding McAllister, although they have some good rigs, they do have some rather old stuff. There is too much good/newer equipment available out there on the cheap. McAllister has been known to make fairly good business decisions regarding cheap shit and turn it into dollars. I am sure Dominion Power are vetting closely whatever vessel they bought and capabilities of said vessel. It was about a three sentence ad looking for an engineer for ā€œWind power workā€ ā€¦Thatā€™s it bug, wish I knew more.

Purpose built W2W vessels comes in many forms:
https://www.wagenborg.com/offshore-towage/walk-to-work-services

https://www.grs-offshore.com/en/offshore-world/vessel-portfolio/walk2work/

Nice article bug, I would be going out on a limb to think McAllister bought anything near this advanced, but ya just never know. Too much money to be made in this rapidly developing industry to go in half assed.

Vineyard Wind will partner with McAllister Towing and Transportation to redevelop an 18.3-acre waterfront industrial property in Bridgeport that is currently underutilized and undeveloped.

I have an inkling Dominion Power is involved in the wind power thing off the East Coast of Va and North Carolina. McAllister would do well to get in from the beginning. The pier staging areas are in deep negotiating talks in the Hampton Roads area. I see jobs coming, and glad for that.

According to a group I follow on facebook, this ā€˜OSVā€™ actually is a late 80s early 90s era crewboatā€¦not an OSV. Someone put a picture up of this boat and it was in mcallister colors. Looked like a 120-140 ft breaux baycraft.
Apparently the customer is requiring them to have stcw compliant crew along with a licensed engineer.FB_IMG_1590807966921

There are negotiations ongoing for a small staging area near the Lesner Bridge, very close to where the Va Pilot boats operate out of for entrance to Chesapeke Bay and offshoreā€¦ That boat in your picture would most likely be able to transit under the bridge and shallow enough draft. The other negotiations are for dockspace at PIT for the big shit. Wind power is coming this way.

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I just find it funny how the term ā€˜OSVā€™ gets used so loosely these days.

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I donā€™t disagree Ctony.

Everybody would like to have the honour of being a part of this project:

So they take an old GoM crew boat and intent to use it as a Crew Transfer Vessel for a wind farm. (??)

This is the type of CTW that is commonly used in the southern part of the North Sea:

For the northern parts and floating wind mills far from shore, a more sophisticated and faster type has been developed:

I presume you could add this device on an old crew boat:

Meanwhile, new designs to suite specific areas and conditions are being developed all the time as wind farms gets established in new parts of the world and new needs evolve.

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Thx bug, I knew Dominion Power was ass deep in this, didnā€™t know who they partnered up with. If it was in the press, I missed the news that day. The local sport fisherman were complaining about the small staging area being adjunct to a very nice public boat boat ramp. It is unused land and can be put to good use. Same can be said for the large staging area at PIT. Quite a few new jobs for the area.

That is pretty slick! Wonder what the max sea state they operate in with that coupling system?

Prior to this video i assumed they would utilize some type of swing rope landing at a wind farm, something like you would find at any generic shallow water platform or satelliteā€¦curious how this farm off virgina will do pax transfers, or how any of the other east coast ones are doing it.

Swing ropes has NEVER been used and could Never be approved for use in European offshore operations. (Even Billy Pughes are banned for normal use in Norway)

I was working for Total in Myanmar, where we had unmanned wellhead platforms dotted around the field. These were designed with a notched ladder (similar to what you see in that video,)

The idea was to use the FRC to transfer the Crane operator + one roustabout to the platform first. They would start up the crane and the maintenance crew would be transferred from the Field boat by Billy Pugh.

No grippers.The notch was designed to fit the bow of a specific type of FRCs. The problem was that that type of FRC had gone out of production some years ago, We found one second hand to fit on the Field boat (at a VERY high price)