Osiris Projects, part of Bibby Marine Survey Services, has ordered the construction of Bibby Athena, sistership to the innovative Bibby Tethra.
The vessel will be built by the French yard Socarenam of Boulogne and is scheduled for delivery next winter and will mirror the capabilities of the Tethra with a few subtle changes to reflect the company’s development into shallow geotechnical sampling and more challenging offshore markets.
Launched in 2011, Bibby Tethra has proven the overall success of the small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) design in maximising stability and seakeeping ability in challenging sea conditions, while consistently achieving quality data.
The popularity of the vessel with the company’s key clients is ultimately behind the decision at Osiris Projects to commission and build an additional vessel.
Although Bibby Athena will be the same overall length as Bibby Tethra at 27.5m, the new vessel is expected to benefit from a number of enhancements, including an increased deck crane capacity of 10.87 tonnes and improved internal layout.
The addition of two forward Schottel pump jets and larger aft electric Schottel drive motors are expected to provide exceptional DP1 (dynamic positioning) capability and an increased generator size will provide 850kVa of electrical power.
To maximise efficiency, Bibby Athena will permanently deploy a dual-head multi-beam sonar system, greatly improving the productivity of bathymetric data acquisition. A water treatment package will also be added to extend offshore endurance.
A further enhancement is that the new vessel will be fitted with a double-drum main winch with two cable sizes to enable deployment of multiple systems without the need to put back to port for changeovers.
A larger online survey lab will improve the volume of data processing and initial quality control that can take place on-board, reducing the amount of processing required at head office.
The Socarenam build is expected to take 15 months. The shipbuilder is well known in France for its high specification military and customs vessels of various designs as well as large multi-role support vessels for the oil and gas industry.
There is no equivalent to Socarenam in the UK where, as far as is known, no-one has ever constructed a SWATH.