SafeWay in Overdrive at Borkum West

SafeWay has reached record transfer speeds during its latest charter at the Borkum West offshore wind farm, performing over ten average daily cargo transfers and topping at 13 transfers in 12 hours.

The transfers were performed using the tip hoist of the gangway, which acted as a 3D lift, SafeWay said, emphasizing that the shift from personnel to cargo transfer mode does not take up any time because of the newly designed load handling A-frame arrangement.

According to the company, the operations proved an impressive score in reducing costs where Safeway could reach positions at Borkum West, as well as at the Wikinger offshore wind farm, without any modifications to the gangway or pedestal, which is due to the standard ten-meter vertical height adjustment of the gangway.

In October 2017, the SafeWay motion compensated offshore access system of the Dutch Van Aalst Group was installed on Olympic Subsea’s 95-meter long vessel Olympic Intervention IV. The 28-meter long walk-to-work Seagull-type has safely transferred workers and their tools from the vessel to the Adwen offshore wind turbines without any significant downtime, Safeway said.

“Our gangway in combination with the ‘Olympic Intervention IV’ proved to reach new record speeds in transferring people and cargo. Last year Siemens gave us a challenging benchmark for this vessel/gangway combination; from sail away to turbine, DP positioning, deploy and transfer 6 people and 3 cargo loads, return in sailing position within 30 minutes,” Remko de Boer, General Manager at SafeWay, said. “This will contribute to the overall industry costs savings, lowering installation and maintenance costs of offshore windfarms.”