A&P Busy in the Ferry Refit Season

The various yards in A&P are well into the ‘ferry refit’ season, with the latest contract being Irish Continental Lines’ 50,938 grt passenger/car ferry Ulysses, which is currently in A&P Birkenhead. This yard is also currently repairing NorseMerchant Ferries’ 9,368 grt Merchant Bravery. The largest ferry project currently underway in the A&P Group, is the modification of the 24,688 grt, 2002-built RoRo vessel Stena Foreteller at A&P Tyne’s Hebburn shipyard. The vessel, the former Cetam Massilia, is owned by Sweden’s Stena RoRo AB, and managed by the Stena’s Northern Marine Management, Glasgow. The contract involves major modifications to the purifier room entailing relocating this equipment to a newly-created machinery space within the lower car hold. Additionally there is to be a new exhaust gas economizer package fitted into the existing engine room uptake spaces, and new emergency escapes from the lower car hold are also to be installed. There is also a comprehensive drydocking and repair schedule, including routine mechanical overhaul, survey works and hull painting. She entered the yard during early December and will sail after commissioning of the boiler and purifier equipment in mid-January 2004. Meanwhile, A&P Tyne is currently carrying out regular refit work onboard the two P&O Ferries’ vessels, the 28,559 grt Pride of Provence, already arrived, to be followed by the 13,061 grt Pride of Bruges. A&P Falmouth is expecting the 37,583 grt Pride of Bilbao and the 28,833 grt Pride of Acquitaine, and is also currently refitting the 22,986 grt European Seaway and the fast-ferry Portsmouth Express. In A&P Southampton, the 14,760 grt Pride of Cherbourg is due after the completion of Wightlink’s 764 grt sisterships Caedmon and Cenwulf, and the 2,983 grt St Helen.