Today I'm here at Tampa ship. We're going to take a look at a couple of Offshore Supply Vessel's,
one in particular that is ice-class and it is probably unique in that it is true Lloyd's ice
class. It can cut through a meter of ice. That's polar ice-class and the shape of this boat is
similar to the one that was converted into RAGNAR in Holland by Icon Yachts, that came out of the
shipyard and was listed for sale for 69 million Euros. By comparison, this ice-class vessel is
a steal. It also would easily win a race. It was actually built in Canada and it was originally a
search & rescue Arctic vessel. It was subsequently refit to go up into the ice to do research. I
has a commercial-grade helicopter pad for a Bell 212, which is a heavy twin-turbine helicopter.
We're going to start our tour here on the main deck aft, which is all enclosed. It was
enclosed to accommodate all the research equipment that they used in the Arctic
and this structure can be completely taken off, and parts of it could be saved- such as
the heli-deck. It also has plenty of room to be an aircraft hangar, as you'll see. So this was a
survey vessel . They pull a spread with compressed air and they do seismic surveys for exploration
to tow the air lines and the electrical lines that record the shock waves when they bounce
back from the formation. The overhead for this deck. the way it's configured now, is actually
is actually this height here. On a conversion you could certainly keep the forward section of
this structure as an aircraft hanger and also to keep a couple of tenders, say 2 x 50 footers. You
could also keep the heavy duty aft section of it, where the bell 212 helipad is. You could remove
the midsection and have open deck. Now we're going forward on the main deck into what is mainly crew
accommodation. Fire protection equipment here - like fire suits and this is a control room for the
seismic guns - to control the hoses and the lines. All of these offshore support vessels are set up
for long range and also high endurance. They expect to be at sea for 30 days, or more. They
have big walk-in refrigerators and behind the main refrigeration unit here is a walk-in freezer unit.
This vessel was originally built as an Arctic search & rescue vessel in Vancouver, Canada. The
vessel is currently arranged to support up to 39 crew and scientists and support personnel living
on board for 30 plus days. So that means that the galley, all the accommodations,
the showers, and all the systems - the waste water systems, the grey water system, black water,
heating system, air conditioning system are all set up for that level of personnel living on
board. That is more than we will need when this is converted into being an expedition yacht.
Crew lounge. As expected, there are a lot of crew cabins. They're dispersed across three deck levels
and some of these will actually be converted over to become support areas when the vessel
is re-purposed. For instance, there would likely be a crew gym, larger crew lounges, and I should
mention that there is also a ship's hospital on board. This will be kept intact because that is
a very useful and practical thing to have on a long range expedition vessel. Now we are up on
the bridge and these are enormous bridges. That was the navigation section that we just looked at
there. Walking forward - here is a list of the electronics that are on board. It's everything
that you need to cruise the world and there is redundancy in all the systems on these vessels.
Typically on a conversion, there's plenty of room up here to put in a lounge so that
the owner and guests can observe and participate in the navigation and the
running of the ship. So the multi-million dollar question that i'm asked all the time
is - how much is it going to cost to convert this former polar ice class search and rescue vessel
into a global expedition yacht with a helipad, a hangar and all of the amenities that one
would expect in a world-class expedition yacht with six state rooms at least, plenty of toys
and the endurance and the yacht quality accommodations?
Well I can tell you our calculations are somewhere between $15 and $20 million
for a basic global expedition yacht and we'll leave it to our clients to do the math. If you're
curious about this, and would like to contemplate doing such a project, please get in touch.