Exceptional: 3 cable ships docked together in Zeebrugge

The Symphony and the Isaac Newton are high-tech vessels designed and built for laying cables on the bottom of the sea. Jan De Nul has a fleet of twelve such ships. An investment of one and a half billion euros in vessels and special equipment. The company is now a global player in installing offshore cable.

“It rarely happens that we have three vessels from the same industry next to each other,” says Benjamin Foubert, Operations manager cable works at Jan De Nul. “The Isaac Newton and the Symphony are in full preparation for the Hollandse Kust Noord and West Alfa project.”

The ship Isaac Newton lays the cables on the seabed, and Symphony will bury the cable. A so-called cable trencher is present on that ship, which is placed on the seabed and can subsequently bury the cable using various techniques.

In full preparation

Preparations are underway in Zeebrugge for a job off the Dutch coast. The ISAAC NEWTON has just loaded 5000 tons of cable. Good for the last sixty kilometers to connect four wind farms to the coast. It is a booming business, but rolling out cables means pushing boundaries.

After this weekend, the final phase of the Dutch project will begin. “The entire project will be completed in May or June at the latest. By then we will have laid a total of four cables, good for 210 kilometers of cable. We brought the last 60 kilometers of cable from Korea and we will start laying from Monday.”