Vestdavit Designs Telescopic Davit for the Danish Navy

Vestdavit has extended its range of boat-handling systems with a new telescopic davit specially designed and developed for a retrofit contract with the Royal Danish Navy.

The Norwegian davit supplier has now secured the award to deliver a total of eight TDBS 8000 systems for launch and recovery of fast rescue boats that will be installed on four existing Absalon and Iver-class naval frigates.

The davit is designed to function in a similar manner to a crane with a telescopic arm that is able to extend up to seven meters and handle boat loads of up to eight tonnes.

The DNV-approved solution is mounted on a slewing foundation that can swivel outwards from a longitudinal position in a confined space on the side of the vessel hull, with the foundation also part of the package to be delivered and installed by Vestdavit.

The system, which complies with Solas requirements, is capable of deploying and retrieving craft in sea state 6 and is designed to handle multiple sizes of craft as well as future boat types.

Among the vessels to be retrofitted, the frigate Peter Willemoes has recently been deployed to bolster Nato’s naval force in the Baltic region, while frigates Absalon and Esbern Snare have been used in UN-led anti-piracy operations off the east and west coasts of Africa, respectively. The remaining frigate is the Nils Juel.

Vestdavit began working on the contractual tender process back in 2018, evolving and developing the davit concept over the past four years in alignment with the client’s specifications, according to Managing Director Rolf Andreas Wigand.

He explained a major challenge was limited space availability due to the narrow location of the top-mounted system on the side of the vessel and the need to avoid installing davit structures and components on the main deck.

Consequently, Vestdavit designed the system with a high level of functional automation given the geometrical limitations for manual operations, with digitalized remote control of davit movements.

“This new solution combines the versatile features of a crane with the functionality of a davit to provide extreme performance in terms of outreach extension and lifting capacity. As such, this represents a further evolution of our telescopic davit range,” Wigand said.

Vestdavit will deliver a total of eight TDBS 8000 systems to four frigates for the Royal Danish Navy. (Image: Vestdavit)