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Workboats can be found everywhere in the maritime and offshore industry: Towing in harbours, supplying platforms or dredging a canal; it can all be done. Developments and innovations regarding these vessels therefore continue to prosper. Maritime Holland takes a look at four new work vessels designed and built by Dutch companies: Royal IHC, DutchWorkboats and Workboats.nl.

One of the Netherlands’ most known shipyards, Royal IHC, recently presented a new hybrid workboat. The Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessel
was introduced as the IHC Workhorse, developed especially for the offshore industry.

IHC says the Workhorse has three main
benefits, namely ease of operation
because of an intelligent touchscreen
concept, significant fuel savings due to
the advanced hybrid system and the superior hull form design, which reduces ship hull resistance during vessel transit. “The new IHC Workhorse saves an additional eight to twelve per cent of fuel when compared to existing hybrid designs on the market. Coupled with the highly optimised hull form, this efficient system includes many unique features”, says Francis Tang, managing director of IHC Asia Pacific.

HDPE

Developments at DutchWorkboats do not stand still either. Their first survey boat was designed and built in cooperation with and for Van Oord, their second was sold to Royal IHC, with the third and fourth going to foreign survey companies. The company designs and builds workboats made of aluminium and HDPE, high-density polyethylene.

Rob Voskuil, commercial director of DutchWorkboats: “Our main ambition is to become one of the major leaders in HDPE workboats, next to our supply of fast aluminium workboats. However, HDPE is not an easy material to work with and there is not much knowledge about using it for boat construction. There are only a few shipyards in the world using it. We do see a lot of opportunities for the material and it has a lot of advances, like being low-maintenance and shockproof, so we continue to expand our knowledge and keep developing new type of workboats with this material.”

The first HDPE-models were designed in
2012, and in the meantime DutchWork-
boats managed to develop their knowl-
edge about the material and designed
the HDPE Crew Tender 8.00, with room
for ten persons.

“One of the difficulties
of HDPE is that it is not as stiff as aluminium. So when you extend the length of the boat, you have to find a way to keep the material stiff. Other companies realise the stiffness, by adding HDPE tubes at the sides of the hull. This however, takes up a lot of deck space and the tubes tend to reach the water fast, influencing the vessel’s speed and manoeuvrability. A compromise we were not willing to make, so the 8.00 is designed without tubes.”

Another advantage of the Crew Tender 8.00 is the fact that the boat is fully containerable in a 40-foot container. The first of this type is already being built for a launching customer, with an outboard engine, a 200 PK Evinrude G2.

Cooperation

Another company using aluminium to build workboats is Workboats.nl. This partnership between KD Workboats and Post Workboats combines both companies’ expertise in the area of respectively aluminium workboats and professional ribs. The cooperation led to the design and construction of the Seahunter, an aluminium RIB of eight by 2.30 metres.

“The Seahunter design is based on Post Workboat’s Tornado 8.50. The RIB is highly manoeuvrable, extremely fast and has excellent handling characteristics”, explains Klaas Post, owner of Post Workboats. The Seahunter is made of five millimetre thick marine grade aluminium. “To achieve optimal strength, this is welded in full to produce an extremely strong vessel. In contrast to a RIB, the Seahunter has a special D-fender instead of an air-filled tube”, says Post.

“The fender is also an important component”, continues Post. “Fender Innovations, the company that supplies this product, manufactures it from one piece. It is based on a foam core with a closed-cell structure, which does not take up water so the buoyancy remains intact under all circumstances. The foam core is wrapped with a reinforced technical fabric, which is in turn coated with a layer of special polymer.”

The Seahunter is employable for a wide range of applications, such as offshore, seismic, rescue and salvage. Therefore, the dimensions of the boat were chosen in order to enable the Seahunter to be transported in a shipping container, coming in handy for companies operating in these areas.

“The handling behaviour is also very important for rescue or salvage use. The water effectively flows off the hull, keeping the boat dry even at top speed and with two and a halve foot waves. The cockpit is completely self-bailing”, says Egbert van Veen, owner of KD Workboats.

Idiot-proof

MultiKitten Another development in DutchWorkboats’ product range is
 a complete new type of vessel, the MultiKitten. The MultiKitten, a nod to the existing larger Multicats, is a small, robust and containerable work platform.

However, it is not very fast, which is opposite to DutchWorkboats’ other vessels: “We have a lot of clients in the dredging and marine engineering industry, and a lot of requests have been made for a self-pro DutchWorkboats’ MultiKitten, a nod to the existing larger Multicats pelled, multifunctional, idiot-proof platform. One that is affordable as well. To explain the idiot-proof part: the vessels are often left vulnerable at the construction site at night
and therefore need a design which prevents it from being damaged easily.”

The Multikitten 6.00 and 7.00 are made of HDPE with a steel frame on the inside. On deck there is room for a small crane and the diesel engine is built-in. Voskuil: “We expect the first MultiKitten 7.00 to be presented during Europort 2015, since the first order has been made. This one will be made from 20-30 millimetres thick HDPE with a galvanised steel frame.”

Anne Kregting