Unique project undertaking sees vessel constructed inland on location On 13 th October 2020, Damen Shipyards Group and Winander Leisure Limited signed the Protocol of Delivery and Acceptance for the official handover of MV Swift, a vessel to be operated by Windermere Lake Cruises Limited, the company said in its release.
The project has been a unique one, with Damen building the vessel inland on location at Windermere in the Lake District National Park in the UK. Over the past 40 years, Damen has delivered over 1.000 of vessels via the Damen Technical Cooperation (DTC). DTC makes possible the building of Damen vessels, anywhere in the world, at non- Damen locations.
This is the first DTC project that the shipbuilder has carried out in the UK. Damen has built MV Swift in a car park on the lakeside owned by the client. As well as being a UK National Park, the Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Damen has worked closely with both its client and the local community in order to ensure compliance with the robust regulations in place to protect this important environment.
MV Swift is the seventeenth vessel in Windermere Lake Cruises’ fleet. She is a unique vessel, tailored to Windermere Lake Cruises’ requirements. The company is one of the UK’s most popular attractions, welcoming over 1.6 million visitors in a normal year. To serve these people, Windermere Lake Cruises needed a vessel that was able to operate in a variety of weather conditions, year-round, picking up and dropping off passengers from small jetties around the lake. To those ends, MV Swift features covered decks with large windows and, at 34 metres, is slightly smaller than the company’s current flagships.
Damen sales manager Mike Besijn said of the handover, “I am very happy to be delivering this special vessel. Working together on this with Windermere Lake Cruises, we have made the project into a success. This is a very unique way of building a vessel, requiring a lot of flexibility and we could not have done it without the support of our customer. Their operational experience has been priceless to us throughout the construction process. I would particularly like to thank managing director Nigel Wilkinson and operations director John Woodburn for the excellent cooperation. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.”
Damen Shipyards Group operates 36 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 11,000 people worldwide. Damen has delivered more than 6,500 vessels in more than 100 countries and delivers around 175 vessels annually to customers worldwide. Based on its unique, standardised ship-design concept Damen is able to guarantee consistent quality. Damen’s focus on standardisation, modular construction and keeping vessels in stock leads to short delivery times, low ‘total cost of ownership’, high resale values and reliable performance. Furthermore, Damen vessels are based on thorough R&D and proven technology. Damen offers a wide range of products, including tugs, workboats, naval and patrol vessels, high speed craft, cargo vessels, dredgers, vessels for the offshore industry, ferries, pontoons and superyachts.
For nearly all vessel types Damen offers a broad range of services, including maintenance, spare parts delivery, training and the transfer of (shipbuilding) know-how. Damen also offers a variety of marine components, such as nozzles, rudders, winches, anchors, anchor chains and steel works. Damen Shiprepair & Conversion (DSC) has a worldwide network of eighteen repair and conversion yards of which twelve are located in North West Europe. Facilities at the yards include more than 50 floating (and covered) drydocks, including the longest, 420 x 80 metres, and the widest, 405 x 90 metres, as well as slopes, ship lifts and indoor halls. Projects range from the smallest simple repairs through Class’ maintenance to complex refits and the complete conversion of large offshore structures. DSC completes around 1,300 repair and maintenance jobs annually, both at yards as well as in ports and during voyage.