Rescue 6 starts sea trials ahead of Gqeberha delivery

Three years ago, the first fully South African-built Offshore Rescue Craft (ORC), launched by the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), made its way to Station 17 in Hermanus.

It was a momentous day, coming a few years after the start of an ambitious programme to introduce a new class of deep-sea rescue vessels suited to South African waters. 

The ORC is self-righting and purpose-built for rescue operations in extreme conditions. At 14.8m long and 4.8m wide, it can be deployed on rescue missions as far as 50 nautical miles from land and has an expected lifespan of at least 40 years.

Station 17’s ORC was the NSRI’s third, the first vessel was built in France and the second one arrived as “hull, deck and bulkheads”. At the time, the NSRI had plans to build another seven vessels in the following 5-8 years. And now, in 2024, ORC number 6 is in the middle of sea trials and will be heading off to its final base destination of Station 6 Gqeberha this week. The NSRI is proud that these ORCs are now built wholly in South Africa, by South Africans, creating new employment and re-igniting skills in the boat-building industry.

The ORC, typically designed for high-performance in tough maritime conditions, undergoes several phases of testing to ensure its functionality, safety, and operational efficiency. We chatted to NSRI Training Manager, Graeme Harding, while he was on the Rescue 6 for the sea trials in Table Bay, Cape Town.

“When you build a boat and you put it in the water for the first time, there are a whole lot of checks you’ve got to do,” says Graeme. “We check all the through hull fittings – that they are water-tight – we check there are no leakages in the hull underneath, and then we start running through things like are the radios working, and that the navigation systems are all working. We do a whole lot of tests with the engines to make sure they can handle different sea states, so we go into a head-on sea, a sea coming from behind and from the side.” 

The testing team, which includes experts from the boat manufacturers, Two Oceans Marine, will take the ORC out for a few hours a day over a few days, in Table Bay, to do these vital checks. “We need to see how the boat handles,” says Graeme. “We have a fuel flow chart, so we know that at a certain RPM the boat is using X amount of diesel per hour. We do a ‘swinging the compass’ test to make sure that the compass is pointing where it should be pointing, and we’ll adjust accordingly.”

It's an A-Z checklist of running through every system on the boat before they head off around the coast to Gqeberha and hand over Rescue 6 to Station 6. Once the team in Table Bay are confident all systems are working, they will have a SAMSA (South African Maritime Safety Authority) Survey conducted: all vessels are required to be surveyed annually by SAMSA for safety and certification.

And then, all things being equal, the team – Graeme as skipper, outgoing NSRI CEO Dr Cleeve Robertson, NSRI Executive Director, Mark Hughes, and three Gqeberha crew members – hope to leave Cape Town in the early in the morning  this week, to reach Mossel Bay by 5pm, where they will refuel and sleep over. They’ll leave again early in the morning – with three new Gqeberha crew members – to reach Station 6 by the evening.

“The team at Station 6 is very excited for this delivery. There were some engine issues with their old rescue boat and it was taken out of commission four months ago so they haven’t got a big boat at the moment – they are really looking forward to receiving Rescue 6!” says Graeme. “She’s yet to be named. We are still looking for a naming sponsor. But right now, we call her Rescue 6.”

Celebrate a Life. Save a life.

You can add your name or that of a loved one to the new Gqeberha NSRI vessel Rescue 6 and celebrate a life.

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