In the middle of this month, the hull of the new patrol boat WSP 23 will be transported some 30km by road on a low loader to the Siemer yacht and boat yard in Darssel after completion at Yachwerft Benjamins in Emden.
Michael Siefener of the Bavarian Interior Ministry in Munich, which is responsible for inland shipping and ports in the state, told Maritime Journal the hull was being fitted out at Siemer up to about the third quarter of 2014.
The 4.1m wide boat, displacing 14.7 tonnes, will then be sailed down the inland waterway network some 800km south to its new owners in Bavaria, Germany’s most southern state, he added.
Mr Siefener said the newbuilding would replace an old boat, also called WSP 23, which had served 18,500 hours and could not be modernised economically.
He said tenders for building the new boat had come from yards in Austria, Finland and Germany. The contract went to Siemer because it had built an 11.35m predecessor to the latest boat for the waterway police in Wuerzburg in 2011. It also delivered another predecessor, the 14.35m loa patrol boat WSP 20 Bayern in 2010.
Siemer sub-contracted the building of the aluminium hull and associated welding to Benjamins, which has long specialised in building and supplying yacht, boat and small ship hulls.
A total of 10 boats similar to the latest acquisition and built between 1979 and 2011 are already in service in Bavaria and all are around 15m long and with much the same superstructures and equipment, depending on their year of build.
They are part of a fleet of 45 boats of different sizes operating with the Bavarian waterways police on the rivers, waterways and lakes in the state. The biggest is 20m long and serves on the Lake of Constance on the German border with Switzerland and Austria.
Unlike Siemer’s WSP 20 Bayern in 2010, which had two MAN D 2866 LXE 40 engines, WSP 23 will be driven by two IVECO engines of type N67 ENT M 45, each producing 258 kW to provide a speed of 36 km/hour.
The boat’s nautical and technical equipment will include a radar plant with ECDIS and AIS, digital BOS radio, echo sounding equipment and special equipment to warn of concentrations of dangerous gas or air mixtures.
It will carry a crew of two and see service in Schweinfurt along a 60km stretch of the River Main. Its duties will include monitoring of commercial as well as private shipping and boating. It will also investigate environmental infringements.
By Tom Todd