Expanding the services with the new pilot cutter

Since taking delivery at the Port towards the end of 2014, new pilot cutter ‘Deneb’ has performed many duties with speed and precision thanks to her fuel efficient engine and maximum speed of 20 knots.

Deneb’s most recent call was to bring an engineer ashore from a passing ship in the English Channel. The engineer had been aboard the ship fixing a problem since the vessel had departed Rotterdam. However, the vessel SKS Skeena, an oil tanker en route to Algeria, was constrained by her draught of 15.9m and could only rendezvous with Deneb seven miles off of Shoreham Port.

This service would have saved the ship owner a considerable amount of time and money, as the deviation was minimal and the vessel did not have to enter a port to disembark the engineer.

Deneb was built last year with just this sort of task in mind. With a spacious six seat wheelhouse and powerful twin 350 HP Cummins diesels, she can complete such a transfer quickly, comfortably and safely. Shoreham Port’s coxswains successfully carried out the crew transfer, enabling SKS Skeena to continue her journey.

Apart from their ‘bread and butter’ job of performing around 2,000 boardings and landings of pilots to ships each year, Shoreham’s two pilot cutters periodically undertake what’s known as offshore services, a task for which they are both fully coded.

Paul Watts, Senior Coxswain/Assistant Hydrographer at Shoreham Port commented “Our skilled team were happy to assist the crew on board SKS Skeena. With the busy west bound channel shipping lane, Shoreham is ideally placed for passing vessels who need our services, so we can look forward to many more interesting and varied transfers in the future.”