Designed by Wärtsilä Ship Design, it has been built at the Western Baltija Shipyard at Klaipeda in Lithuania, the first complete fishing vessel to be commissioned at the yard since the Soviet era – and it has to be said that the yard hasn’t returned to building complete vessels in any kind of a small way.
Gitte Henning is Denmark’s largest pelagic vessel, the latest in a line of pelagic vessels to carry the same name and owned by Denmark’s pelagic king Henning Kjeldsen.
FNI spoke to skipper and owner Henning Kjeldsen as the new Gitte Henning was steaming to land at the FF factory in Skagen after a fine start to its career and a second 3500t blue whiting trip, having taken the whole of its 7000t quota in two trips.
There was a brief stopover at Lerwick during the first trip for some last-minute adjustments and a call at Egersund following the second trip before continuing to Skagen from fishing grounds west of Scotland. He told us that after landing, they would be changing fishing gear to start on the sandeel season after a few small jobs have been done.
“It’s a new vessel and there are always a few things that need to be fixed or changed with a new boat,” he said, commenting that he expected to be back at sea after a two-day changeover to sandeel gear.
According to Henning Kjeldsen, he decided to go to the Western Baltija yard for his newbuild largely because of price, and the Wärtsilä designers who designed the previous vessel, now fishing as Asbjørn, had done a fine job so he returned to Wärtsilä for the new trawler’s design and came away with a full Wärtsilä package of design and the entire propulsion and power generation system.
“The cost is 25% less building in Lithuania,” he said, admitting that the new ship had been delayed but commenting that this is nothing unusual. “There are delays at practically every yard,” he said.
“The yard did a good job and I’m satisfied with their work,” he added and commented that although the Western Baltija yard has not built a complete fishing vessel since the Soviet era, it has built tugs and oil industry vessels – but a fishing vessel like Gitte Henning is still a complex vessel and in spite of the complexity of the build the yard did well.
Gitte Henning is built as a dedicated pelagic vessel – although the sandeel counts as a bottom fishery – and catches are held in RSW tanks for fresh delivery. The main changes compared to the previous Gitte Henning are the power options, with the possibility of routing extra power to the shaft form the generators as well as the main engine for an extra burst of speed, something that comes in useful for mackerel in particular.
“We have a 90t towing power with the main engine but can boost this to 128 tonnes. Mackerel are a very fast-swimming fish and if we can tow faster, we catch bigger fish that bring a better price,” he explained. “We land most of our fish to FF in Skagen, as well as sometimes in Peterhead or Lerwick, and our mackerel goes to Nils Sperre in Ålesund.”
Gitte Henning has enough quota to fish to keep it at sea an estimated 300 days a year, the result of having acquired nine or ten other vessels and their quotas over the years and with plenty of quota to fish, there are mackerel and herring quotas to be taken after the sandeel season.
“We sail as a crew of seven – me and six others,” he said. “The boat is very quiet and handles well. There’s very little movement and that’s an important factor as the boat is stable in the water and there is very little movement of the fish in the tanks, so that means better quality.”
Own net loft
Gitte Henning started its fishing career on blue whiting with a stopover at Egersund before the first trip to pick up two sets of Egersund Trål fishing gear. The two trawls are 2300 metre nets with spliced hexagonal meshes in the front sections, and Egersund Trål also supplied two 800t blue whiting codends.
Henning Kjeldsen has also invested in fishing gear company Thyborøn Trawlbinderi, run by veteran netmaker John Bech, and this company has supplied Gitte Henning with its sandeel gear and a sandeel codend, two 1236 metre herring trawls and a mackerel trawl of the same size, both made with hexagonal meshes in the front sections and a 90m herring/mackerel codend, as well as thirty 100m bridles in 38mm SK75 Dyneema, 2300m of 44mm Bridon warp on each trawl drum and two sets of 4000m of 11mm net sounder cable.
Thyborøn Trawlbinderi, which had stopped trading for several years before Henning Kjeldsen took the step of setting it up again, has also been supplying gear to other vessels in the Danish fleet, including the ex-Gitte Henning, Asbjørn.
Trawl doors are from Thyborøn Skibssmedie and Gitte Henning has a pair of 15 square metre type 15VF pelagic doors for fishing herring and mackerel, although a 17 square metre pair transferred form the old Gitte Henning were used for the two initial blue whiting trips. A pair of 25 square metre type 3 doors are used for sandeel. Trawl blocks and other deck hardware are Blue Line gear from Br Markussen.
The ship’s fishing electronics are a pair of Furuno TS-337 cable headline-mounted 360° scanning sonars with eight remote catch sensors and the wireless system is a Marport headline sounder with gear distance sensors and four catch sensors.
Wärtsilä package
Martin Vestbostad at Wärtsilä’s design department, which designed both the new Gitte Henning and its predecessor, said that the owner’s primary requirements were for a large capacity and the design was centred around optimum performance and a speed of 13-14 knots in an approximately half-loaded condition.
“There was also a requirement for a high bollard pull which is why there’s such a big propeller at 4.40 metres and the option of transferring power to the shaft from the auxiliary engine to boost towing power to a 128 tonne bollard pull,” he said, adding that unlike the previous Gitte Henning for which Wärtsilä provided only the design, this time the company also provided the engines and the complete propulsion system – as they are doing for the Østerbris under construction in Turkey and the Harvest that is currently approaching completion in Norway.
Gitte Henning measures 86.30m overall with a 17.60m moulded breadth and a depth to the main deck of 10.20m. Tank capacity is for 599 cubic metres of fuel, 53 cubic metres of hydraulic oil and 600 cubic metres of ballast water can be carried.
The main engine is a Wärtsilä 9L32 that develops 5200kW to drive a 4400mm diameter propeller via a SCV 95/2-PDC58 reduction gearbox. This provides a 90t bollard pull, but by routing power via the 2700kW water cooled shaft generator from the 2600kW Wärtsilä 8L26 auxiliary engine, the bollard pull can be boosted to 128t.
This also provides the option of running solely on the auxiliary engine when only light power usage or silent running are required with a 12-13 knot maximum speed, or as a take-me-home option. A further take-me-home option is to run on the 1745kW retractable azimuthing thruster mounted forward, and supplied by Brunvoll, which also supplied the 1200kW bow thruster.
Gitte Henning has the option of two running modes via the main engine, with the propeller running at 110rpm for step 1 and at 145rpm for step 2, while there are also floating frequencies of between 50 and 60Hz, all of which contributes towards increased fuel economy. The engines are fitted with catalytic converters for reduction of NOx emissions by as much as 80%.
In addition to the two Wärtsilä engines, Gitte Henning has a 1000kW Mitsubishi located outside the engine room, allowing power to be provided while reducing noise levels in the engine room and reducing running costs while discharging. A 250kW Deutz harbour set is also on board.
Laid out as a combined pelagic trawler/ purse seiner, Gitte Henning has a package of winches from Rapp Hydema that starts with 95t main trawl winches that are managed by an autotrawl system. The three net drums each have a 95t pull and the side codend drum has a 65t pull. In addition there are twin 10t net sounder winches, a 12t anchor winch and an array of 10t and 4t helper winches.
Rapp Hydema supplied the two 35t purse winches, while the 60t net winch is from Triplex, as are the 45t fish pump crane, the deck crane and the net roller crane for handling purse seine gear. SeaQuest supplied the two 20 inch fish pumps.
Gitte Henning has a 3280 cubic metre capacity in 13 tanks, chilled by a twin 1200kW RSW system with remotely controlled valves from Johnson Controls. Iras supplied the two 4200 litre vacuum pumps with four 66kW compressors that allow an unloading rate of 200t per hour.
The wheelhouse is fitted out with largely Furuno equipment, including FAR-2117 and FAR-2127 radars, ECDIS electronic charts, two FCV-1200 echo sounders and an FCV-30 sounder. The Kaijo KSE-110 fish-sizing echo sounder is a departure from the Furuno theme, and Kaijo also supplied the KCS-3221 low-frequency sonar. The FSV-35 and FSV-85 sonars are from Furuno, as are the current log and the DS-80 doppler log.
Plotters are a pair of MaxSea sets and a Sodena unit. The gyro compass is from Simrad and the twin satellite compasses are from Furuno, while Simrad supplied the two AP-70 autopilots and the FA-150 ASI, twin GP-150 navigators and BR-560 motion detector watch alarm.
Apart from the three Icom VHF sets, Furuno supplied the complete communications package, including three VHF sets, a one MF/HF set, GMDSS station and the ship’s satellite phone. Gitte Henning has satellite internet and TV on board.
