Newcastle upon Tyne Research Vessel RV-Princess Royal
A project to be proud of…
MEKY and Dr. A. Mantouvalos have many reasons to be proud of the Princess Royal, first of all it was a challenging project, since the client and the designer was the same person, i.e. the Marine Department of Newcastle upon Tyne University, the builder was ALNMARITEC.
MEKY donated to the University all the design work, and a Greek made OLYMPIC 3.7m RIB to be used on-board the RV as a tender.
This projects though has a greater sentimental value for everyone involved, since all the technology behind the design has been developed in-house there are certain people who have been working really hard and for too long to achieve this result. Being one of the very first people involved in this project Dr. A. Mantouvalos, even before it was proposed, has made a strong impact in the design and thus the boat features one of his Deep-V catamaran hullforms modified and optimised for the specific application even further by some of the world leading experts in marine hydrodynamics. The hullform has been tested in numerous towing tanks in UK and in Turkey and has been further optimised.
Equipment and features
Integral equipment
3 tonne hydraulic A-frame
2 x 2 tonne trawl winches
2 tonne auxiliary winch
Hydrographic conducting winch
6.5 tonne-m knuckle boom crane
Pot hauler
Static drift-net hauler
1.5m x 1.5m moon pool for ROV
deployment
Wave radar
Motion sensor
Speed log (EM type flush STW)
Propeller shaft thrust and torque gauges
150mm propeller observation windows
Boroscope apertures
Hydrophones at bow
Marine science equipment
6 x 5 l Rosette water sampler with
integral CTD unit
Coupled, or independent, fast repetitionrate
flurometers and C-DOM sensors
Scientific Meteorological package
Day grab and Van Veen grab
Range of static and towed fishing gears
Underwater stills and video cameras
In-line thermosalinograph
Towed Side-scan sonar
Movement compensating Marine balance
Laboratory PCs
Onboard microscope & camera
Research Vessel
Capabilities
Low and high speed (> 20 knots) transit to research grounds
Use of static fishing gear
Conventional surface, mid-water and bottom trawling
Plankton sampling and bottom dredging
Water sampling at depths up to 200m
Sea floor coring and rock dredging
Soft sediment sampling and sea floor photography
Undergraduate / postgraduate teaching facility
Platform for a wide variety of research programmes
Charter for government and commercial organisations
Marine wildlife observation and acoustic monitoring
Environment (wind/wave/current) monitoring
Underwater acoustic investigations
Cavitation observations
Performance monitoring (of torque, thrust, fuel consumption, SOG, STW etc.)
Anti-fouling performance assessment
Bio-fouling sampling
Biofuels research
Full scale experimentation
Vocational training
Water quality assessment
Wind farm / wet renewable farm support
Underwater ROV/AUV/diving support