Went to Liverpool first thing and even though the light was not the best at 7.45am I managed to take a couple of pictures of Lovina and SKS Tweed. My one hour meeting took six hours which meant I had to race to my next appointment near Trafford Park. It was quiet in Liverpool as far as new ships go and it was only on my way back to the car I saw anything new.
The new ship was the Dutch registerd tug Tessa W (IMO: 9503794) which has a GT of 212 and was built by Neptunus of Aalst in the Netherlands (Yard No. 307) in 2008. She had towed in Dutch registered multi-purpose barge Stemat 89 (no IMO? MMSI 244750587) owned by Stemat Marine Services who are based in Rotterdam. Stemat own a wide variety of vessels and seem to operate World-wide. There are a lot of vessels working on the wind farms in Liverpool Bay and beyond and Liverpool is a regular haunt for ships and crews working out there. Stemat 89's outline specification is noted below
Dimensions 80,0 x 24,0 x 5,0 m
Winches 6x 60 ton
Central controlled from control cabin.
Cargo capacity 3900 ton
Gross tonnage 3665
Deck load maximum 15 ton/m2
Bunker capacity Fuel: 7 tanks, total approx. 600 m3.
Fresh water: 7 tanks, total approx. 900 m3.
Service unit with mess room, galley, dry store, cold store, freezing chamber, office, toilet, changing room and air conditioning.
Office unit with 3 offices, 1 recreation room and toilet.
Control unit bridge with 5 offices.
Heading through Eccles I saw Arklow Flair (IMO 9361732) at the Cerestar Wharf, the second Arklow vessel to vist in as many days. Arklow Flair has a GT of 2999 and was built by Murueta, Guernica, Spain (Yard No. 263) in 2007. I'm sure I have seen this ship before as Arklow vessels are relatively common sites in the North West but apparently not. I read somewhere that they are renaming the vessels in the Arklow 'fleet' by replacing the Arklow name with something else. Need to find out what this is via google at some point.