The MPC “Advance” in action

CTruk already has a multi-purpose catamaran out on the water. Advance was the prototype and the first vessel to use CTruk Boats’ flexible pod system. Carrying out refuelling of up to twenty generators on wind turbines every day, Advance has spent 50% of her time pushed on to the tower whilst refuelling takes place. This is estimated as being ten times the duties usually expected of a wind farm vessel. The amount of pressure the boat was under could be seen when the first fender gave way after only two months of use. These are commercially designed for work-boat use and have been proven on other, similar boats to last for two years.

Ben Simpson of CTruk Boats explains, “We’ve been working with the crew of the Advance to find out what works best and what we can improve on. So far, we’ve discovered that the flexible pod system has been successful with Advance. The water jets have also made a huge improvement on the down time we experienced with propellers, where we used to lose up to a day a month lost due to debris damaging the prop”. He continued, “We are the only company which is specialising in the design, build and operation of wind farm support vessels. This means that hard won operating experience gets fed back directly into the design of the vessels

Tags: Advance, CTruk