First offshore operation in French waters for Inyanga Entsha

In May 2021 Inyanga Maritime acquired the ‘Inyanga Entsha’, a dynamically-positioned (DP2) multi-purpose vessel (MPV), dedicated to the marine energy sector. After an efficient dry-docking last winter in Appledore, including the installation of a 15-tonnes deck crane, she started her operations in March 2022 on an offshore wind project in the North Sea.

A contract to perform a cable upgrade operation on the Paimpol-Bréhat tidal test site has been awarded to Inyanga, following a European call for tender launched by the Brittany Region economic development agency BDI with the support of French utility EDF, in the frame of the TIGER Interreg project. This project is the first one done by Inyanga with its own vessel and the first operation in French waters for the Entsha.

She arrived in Saint-Malo early September to mobilize the equipment requested for the marine operation and then transited to the test site, located in Northern Brittany. The first part of the operation was to retrieve the export cable end to deck and to maintain position to allow MacArtney’s team to implement modifications to the connector. Inyanga Entsha’s Diesel-Electric Propulsion, offering 35% increased energy efficiency leading to very low fuel consumption and very high reliability, was a key economic advantage for such operation. Once modifications completed, the export cable was reinstalled and stabilised on the seabed. A few other structures that are no longer in use were also recovered from the seabed.

While on site, Inyanga was also contracted by Energie de la Lune to deploy several environmental measurement structures to improve the environmental characterization of the test site dedicated to the demonstration and optimization of tidal energy technology.