The ship · Falmouth, Cornwall
CS Helford
A 98 m repair ship: smaller and handier than a cable-laying ship, with two cable tanks, bow sheaves and a jointing room. Between jobs she waits in Falmouth, as repair ships always have.
On screenSpare cable flaked in a tank around its cone
Particulars
The numbers
- Length
- 98 m
- Home port
- Falmouth
- Transit speed
- 12 kn
- Call-out to sailing
- 24 h
- Cable tanks
- 2
- Spare cable aboard
- 60 km
- Grapnel work to
- 6,000 m
- ROV to
- 2,000 m
- Berths
- 52
Bow to stern
Where each
job happens
- 01 · Lift · lay
Bow sheaves
Big wheels the cable runs over as it comes up from the seabed or goes back down.
- 02 · Lift · lay
Cable engine
Hauls in the grapnel rope and the cable, then pays the cable out again, with a brake to hold it.
- 03 · Splice
Jointing room
A clean, steady room for fusion-splicing fibres and testing them with the shore stations.
- 04 · Spare
Cable tanks
Two tanks of spare cable coiled around central cones, 60 km in all.
- 05 · Find
Bridge
Thrusters hold her over the position, stopped or creeping, while the grapnel works below.
- 06 · Find
ROV and A-frame
In shallower water a remotely operated vehicle finds and handles the cable on the seabed.
Before her