FEBRUARY 3, 2014 — The four 76-meter (252 ft) platform supply vessels building forJackson Offshore Operators at BAE Systems Jacksonville, FL, shipyard are the first in a new GPA 675J PSV series designed by Guido Perla & Associates, Inc. Features include a newly developed bow design encompassing GPA’s special shaped bulb and forward sections to result in enhanced sea keeping in any sea direction.
The first in the series, the Breeze, was launched January 30 (see earlier story).
“The launching of the Breeze represents a huge milestone and it gets us one step closer to our ultimate goal of delivery. We are very thankful to our partners BAE, GPA and Rolls Royce for aiding us in getting to this point.” said Lee Jackson /CEO of Jackson Offshore Operators.
Throughout the engineering and construction process, GPA worked closely with tJackson Offshore, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce to produce a vessel series meeting all operational requirements. In line with GPA’s principles and methods, the customized vessel series uses standard components to gain optimized cargo capacity, improved fuel consumption, ease of maintenance, redundancy, excellent maneuverability, superb sea keeping and highest safety and comfort levels for the 34 crew members the vessels can each accommodate.
GPA applied its new series of hull forms that provides a more efficient hull compared to previous designs. The hull form allows the vessel to maintain course, speed and comfortable motions at any sea state and direction of encounter.
The bow, stern and hull form of the vessel are properly balanced in terms of ship response to sea state, providing low accelerations and good recovery responses, making a very dry and comfortable vessel on all sea states and directions. Unlike designs that concentrate on performance in mainly head seas, sacrificing all around performance, te GPA 675J PSV improves overall hull performance by balancing the stern with the bow of the vessel.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to design the Breeze and her sister vessels Thunder, Squall and Lightning and see it as a vote of confidence that Jackson Offshore Operators trusted the GPA team with this significant project,” says Guido Perla, Chairman of GPA. “As we do with every project though, we emphasize that the success of these vessels is based on the hard work and dedication of every single person involved, on merging expertise and experience and on good communication and planning from beginning to end. With over 150 offshore vessels delivered worldwide and in the US over the last decade, we are pleased to add these four workhorses to our stable of PSVs in the Gulf of Mexico and look forward to the delivery of the Breeze in May.”
The new series will increases the number of GPA-designed offshore vessels operating in the Gulf of Mexico to 26.
The GPA 675J PSV series has the class notation ABS, +A1, Circle E Offshore Support Vessel (Supply-HNLS), +AMS, DPS-2, FiFi-1, ACCU, SOLAS, USCG Subchapter I& L, Full Ocean, USCG EEP150 Notation, MARPOL Annex I, II, IV and V.
