Visitors to Cape Town Harbour and drivers along FW de Klerk Boulevard would have noticed a massive vessel towering over others.
The heavy construction vessel, the Seven Arctic, has been designed for subsea construction within ultra-deep water and hostile environments, according to a press statement from its owners Subsea 7. It has operated in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Brazil, and in the North Sea for the oil and gas industry.
The vessel is equipped with a 325-ton Huisman vertical pipelay system, a 7 000-ton Maats underdeck basket for storage of flexible pipe/umbilical and a new design, a 900-ton Huisman rope luffing knuckle boom crane.
The cranes are electric and use a traction and storage winch configuration, which stops drum crushing and rope cut-ins. The system also uses cylinder-type active (AHC) and passive heave compensation. In addition to being a back-up to the AHC system, the passive system acts as a shock absorber for operations in the splash zone.
The vessel was designed by Wärtsilä, and built in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries. It has a length of 162m and a breadth of 32m, with accommodation for 132 people and a deck area of 2 600m². It is equipped with a ROV Hangar (port and starboard) with a working water depth of 3 000m.