VESSEL REVIEW | Daystar – North Sea prawn trawler delivered to Scottish owner

UK boatbuilder Parkol Marine Engineering has handed over a new trawler to fishing boat owner and skipper Stephen West based in Fraserburgh on Scotland's east coast.

The 25.09- by eight-metre Daystar replaces an earlier, similarly named but slightly smaller Parkol-built trawler in the owner's fleet. The newbuild was designed by SC McAllister and Co for twin-rig trawling of prawns in the North Sea as was the case with its 2017-built predecessor.

The new Daystar is of steel construction with a round bilge hull, a transom stern, a bulbous bow, a soft nose stem, and a full length shelter deck. Below deck, the compartments are subdivided by three watertight bulkheads into an aft accommodation space with steering gear, the engine room, an FRP-lined fishroom with capacity for 600 boxes, and a forepeak tank.

On the main deck are a galley, a mess, a skipper's cabin, and a toilet. There is also a steel shelter with integral gallow arrangement, over net drum space, that continues to the transom. A weathertight shelter on the forward side of the deckhouse is allocated for fish handling facilities, a fish hopper, an ice machine, a trawl winch, and a door to the fo'c'sle store.

On the shelter deck are the trawl gallows, a power block crane, the aluminium wheelhouse, a gilsen post, and a 1,000kg landing crane, which can be operated either directly or remotely from a dedicated aft console in the wheelhouse.

The electronics suite includes equipment from Intellian, a Hondex fishfinder, a WASSP multibeam echosounder, a Simrad autopilot, Sailor and ICOM radios, a GMDSS, Olex and Sodena plotters, JRC and Furuno radars, and a Scanmar trawl monitor. The wheelhouse also has NorSap seats.

The fishing equipment meanwhile includes Bopp winches and net drums, a Silecmar automatic shooter and hauler, and Thyborøn trawl doors. The winches can be controlled from the wheelhouse with monitoring of their operation via live feed from CCTV cameras and the net drums have dedicated controls on the shelter deck and the main deck.

The catch handling workstations were supplied by Seagate Fabrication and the processing equipment includes a Geneglace icemaker, prawn and fish washers, a double dip prawn tank, a conveyor, and chutes. The fishroom also has Airo-Tech overhead fans for chilling.

Power for the vessel is provided by a Mitsubishi S6R2 T2 main engine with a rated output of 477 kW at 1,350 rpm. This drives a Nogva Heimdal propeller and gearbox assembly to deliver a speed of around 10 knots. The propulsion setup also includes a Bopp bow thruster and two Mitsubishi 6D16-TE2 106kW auxiliary engines for powering two 100ekW generators.