Windcat Workboats launches its newest vessel. Picture: Stephen Waller
Windcat Workboats has launched its latest vessel for the growing renewable energy industry at ABP’s Port of Lowestoft.
The vessel, ‘Windcat 38,’ is the first to be launched following the signing of a long term lease agreement between ABP and Windcat Workboats for their new marine engineering facility in the port.
Windcat Workboats owns and operates over 38 offshore crew transfer vessels which are predominantly used in the European offshore wind sector.
There is an important free resource available to the whole of the shipping industry that makes a major contribution to safety and that surveyors can help to improve. This is the Mariners Alerting and Reporting Scheme (MARS) operated by The Nautical Institute. MARS is a free resource and The Nautical Institute hopes that surveyors will help to make its existence known to the maritime world. The Nautical Institute wants as many mariners and, indeed, as many in shipping as possible, to benefit from lessoned learned from accidents and near misses. Surveyors can spread the word to let mariners and companies know the resource is there.
The background to MARS is known to all; across the major transportation modes and in many other fields, human error looms as the leading cause of both accidents and incidents. In recent years, the definition of human error has been expanded to include concepts such as unsafe supervision and organisational influences (e.g. resource management and operational processes). In the maritime industry approximately 90 percent of accidents can be traced to human error despite the promotion of regulations, training and quality management systems.
