Offshore boom brings bonanza for ferries

摘要

The past few years have seen demands from the offshore industry create a whole new range of opportunities for ferries. Vessels are now based, along with purpose-built accommodation barges and even cruise ships, at a number of locations. Others, more extensively converted and designated accommodation and repair vessels (ARV), are regularly at sea, supporting gas or oil platforms and, now, the ever-increasing number of wind farm projects. The use of passenger ships in static accommodation roles is nothing new; the British Government called on ferries to house military personnel in Port Stanley following the liberation of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Sealink's Harwich-Hook of Holland vessel St Edmund (1975/8,987gt) was later bought by the Ministry of Defence to return to the South Atlantic as Keren, and had been dubbed the 'Port Stanley Hilton' before sale back for ferry traffic in 1986, continuing until going to breakers in 2009. Built on the Tyne by Swan Hunter for New Zealand's Union Steamship Co, the turbo-electric powered Rangatira (1972/13,102gt) was no stranger to an accommodation role before a stay in the Falklands from 1982 to 1986, having housed workers building an oil platform in Loch Kishorn, Scotland in 1977-78 before a move to Shetland until 1981 during the creation of the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal. She went under Blue Star Line management to Port Stanley, resuming as a ferry in the Mediterranean from 1986 until arriving to be broken up at Aliaga, Turkey in December 2004.