Sealion Shipping Ltd. orders winches for offshore Brazil operations

Sealion Shipping Ltd. (Farnham, England) placed an order for Rapp deepwater and a single transponder winch early this year, along with various associated parts and services. Rapp’s strong showing on the first winch, combined with solid in-field support, led to a second deepwater winch being ordered.

Rapp's TWS-11000 design (pictured here) is the main workhorse winch; the first was installed in early 2009 aboard the DP-II class Drive-support vessel Toisa Sentinel (pictured below), followed by another aboard the Toisa Conqueror in May. Both winches handle 3500m of 29mm diameter wire; line pull is 53 tons first layer at speed step 1 with a corresponding line speed of 33 meters per minute. Both winches feature tension control.

Since placing first TWS-11000 with initial customers aboard super trawlers Defender, Alaskan Command, and Don Julio long ago, the Rapp TWS-11000 series has proven enormously popular as evidenced by a worldwide customer base. Rapp's in-house manufactured WDU-10000 series gearbox, with a trio of motors, powers the winch. Even if one motor fails, continuous use of the winch is assured, and gear reduction aids in extending motor service life.

"Our newest winch customers working deepwater operations as part of offshore oil contracts cannot accept winch downtime, if even for short periods," notes Rapp Hydema U.S. President Johann Sigurjonsson. "So our gearbox approach for powering winches makes a lot of sense to offshore operators. They have tight timelines and strong contractual incentives for continuous operations."

Rapp's gearbox has proven so durable that it has supplied separately as a stand-alone also for various applications. Most often, it has been used as a swap-out for ailing single direct-drive motors in similarly rigorous continuous-use applications - and sometimes far removed from winch operations.

Rapp has also supplied its SOW-300 winch for transponder-handling related to dynamic positioning. As with the TWS-11000 winch series, the SOW-300 has been very widely supplied over the years. The winch features automatic synchronized level winding, a requirement called out in Sealion's contract with its end customer; this feature is often absent from general-purpose winches used elsewhere for transponder utilization. The winch also has passive heave-compensation.

For Rapp, the Sealion order coincides with ongoing expansion into the deepwater markets of the U.S. Gulf region and in Europe. Rapp opened a Houston office in 2005, and since that time has won contracts for a number of deepwater and heavy-lift winches. These and ROV winches have been supplied in parallel to offshore oil industry customers in Europe.