VESSEL REVIEW | Fruitful Vine – Fully-equipped trawler for Scotland’s coastal waters

Scottish fishing company Nicol Fishing recently took delivery of a new trawler from local builder Macduff Shipyards.

Fruitful Vine replaces a similarly named 2010-built trawler in the fleet owned by brothers John and Zander Nicol. The newbuild and Steadfast Hope, another Nicol-owned vessel, will operate as a pair trawl team in Scottish coastal waters.

Macduff Ship Design said that at an early stage in the design phase, a decision was taken to remodel the vessel's bow based on the preliminary results from a tank testing program being run in collaboration with Macduff Shipyards.  Further detailed analysis on the design was conducted by the Wolfson Unit in Southampton using CFD technology to compare the proposed new bow against previous models with the results showing a net decrease in hull resistance at steaming speeds. Following this, the hull form was faired and finalised by Macduff Ship Design, which then produced a full set of steel construction plans along with conducting the incline experiment and producing the vessel's stability booklet. The fabrication of the hull was carried out in Macduff with the construction reviewed and verified by SFIA and the MCA.

The hull of Fruitful Vine features a double chine hull form, transom stern and modern bow designed to cut cleanly through the sea with less energy leading to a reduction in fuel consumption and emissions along with increased crew comfort. Below deck are the cabins, the engine room, the fish hold, and a large freshwater tank forward of the collision bulkhead. Above deck are the aft shelter, the galley/mess and side passage area, the fish processing area, and then the forepeak where the trawl winch is situated.

A bespoke hydraulic deck machinery package was fabricated by the yard. This consists of a triple barrel winch with increased drum size to accommodate pair fishing gear, two split net drums, two bagging winches, two small gear handling winches, a cod-end lifting winch, and a dedicated anchor windlass. Thistle Marine supplied both the MFB8 landing crane and MBK13 power block crane, both of which featuring a slew ring base.

Primary hydraulic power is provided by a single Parker hydraulic pump driven from a dedicated Mitsubishi 6D24 auxiliary engine producing 218 kW whilst secondary hydraulic power is provided by a Parker hydraulic pump driven from a power take-off fitted to the main propulsion's gearbox. A hydraulically powered bow thruster with 2.3 tonnes of thrust was supplied by Kort Propulsion. The hydraulic system, designed by the yard, is cooled via a Blokland box cooler and Bowman heat exchanger.

The propulsion package features a 2.5-metre fixed-pitch propeller driven by a Caterpillar C32 main engine that produces 492 kW at 1,600 to 1,800 rpm through a Masson Marine W7400 reversible gearbox with a 9.077:1 reduction. Macduff Shipyards said this propulsion package has demonstrated itself to be both robust and adaptable with the wide operating speed range of the C32 main engine providing flexibility to achieve full power from a fixed-pitch propeller both whilst steaming and trawling.

The newbuild also features a triple rudder system and a high lift propeller nozzle. The electrical power onboard is provided by two Mitsubishi generator sets. Each generator has a rating of 98 kWe and is of sufficient size to run the vessel's power, independently providing complete redundancy.

The electrical systems on board were designed and fitted by R.D. Downie, which also fabricated the vessel's switchboard and control panels for all the pumps and motor starters. In addition to this, R.D. Downie also provided the fire, bilge, and gas alarm systems on board along with the navigation light panel and assisted with the installation of the navigation equipment.

The fish processing deck features a catch handling system designed and built by the yard and is complemented by a DEGA resin floor system fitted by PBP Services. Two separate compartments are formed within the fish processing area and house both a storeroom and ice plant room. The fish hold refrigeration system along with the ice machine was supplied and fitted by Premier Refrigeration. A high specification navigation package has been supplied and fitted onboard by McMinn Marine. Scanmar provided the net monitoring package while Furuno provided a wide-angle sonar seafloor profiler (WASSP) along with a TimeZero plotter.

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