Samsung Heavy Industries’ Geoje, South Korea shipyard has delivered Pacific Orca (pictured), the world’s largest wind farm installation vessel, to Singapore-based Swire Pacific Offshore. Swire Pacific’s Danish-based subsidiary, Swire Blue Ocean, has a contract from a consortium of Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München/SWM that will see the vessel used to transport 80 Siemens wind turbines for the DanTysk Offshore Wind Farm, 69km west of the island of Sylt in the German North Sea.
Ordered in July 2010, Pacific Orca measures 161m by 49m and has six 105m jacking legs that extend a maximum of 80m below the hull. She is capable of transporting and installing 12 wind turbine units of 3.6MW and allows installation of wind farms to a depth of 60m. The demand for windfarm installation vessels similar to Pacific Orca is expected to increase, and Swire Pacific Offshore has another windfarm installation vessel on order with Samsung HI, Pacific Osprey.
