Damen Delivers Crew Boat

After successful seatrials at the shipyard in Gorinchem, Damen have delivered the first of three new Crew Boats to Kanoo Marine (a division of Kanoo Shipping Agencies). The first-of-class has meanwhile arrived in the Gulf and will shortly commence service. The second vessel is just about to leave the shipyard and the third will undergo trials in June.

Kanoo Shipping Agencies (part of Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo - www.ybakanoo.com) is a longtime customer of Damen. The company provides among others a network of ship agency’s services throughout the Gulf, with fast crew boats currently operating out of Ras Tanura and Juaymah (Saudi Arabia) and Fujairah (UAE).

The new crew boats are based on the standard Damen Stan Tender 1905 design, of which already 3 units are in operation with other owners. The version developed for Kanoo can carry 6 passengers and a payload of 2.5 tons whilst maintaining a speed of 18 knots. The vessel’s main purpose will be to transfer ship’s crews and officials, as well as stores and spares.

As with the earlier vessels, a lot of thought was put into developing the arrangement of the boats. The layout now provides passengers and crew with great comfort during passage and ensures maximum safety during crew transfer operations. The vessels further have all-round visibility for passengers, a powerful air conditioning system and an integrated safety instruction DVD-system, just to name a few features.

The design philosophy to optimize for reliability and durability has further resulted in an oversized engine cooling capacity, redundant engine room ventilation with dust filters and redundant water-cooled air conditioning; all optimized on the basis of Kanoo’s and Damen’s long experience with Gulf conditions.

Damen earlier built a series of four larger crew boats for Kanoo in 1996. These Stan Tender’s 2606 have a higher payload and speed than the present newbuilds; they are still in excellent condition and capable to rendez-vous with passing ships at over 100 NM offshore. The introduction of these vessels in the Gulf has helped Kanoo to build its present market position and reputation for quality and service.

By acquiring this new class of crew boats, Kanoo are diversifying their fleet and will be able to always deploy the best suitable vessel for each voyage. With the ever increasing ship’s traffic in the Gulf, it is expected that the new crew boats will be much in demand and will contribute to further success of Kanoo’s operations.