Sille Marie joins Norwegian enterprise

New Sillie Marie replaces an older vessel acquired from Sweden when the venture got underway in 2015, and which has since been sold and is back under the Swedish flag. The business is managed by Carl Aamodt, while the Salthaug family does what they do best, with skipper Bastian Salthaug, Yngvar Salthaug and chief engineer Tobias Salthaug fishing for industrial species and for mackerel and herring for human consumption. The new trawler also has options for handling whitefish, with a processing area outfitted by BoaTech with a pair of KM Fish gutting machines.

The order for the new 65.9-metre, 14-metre beam vessel with a 1,726 cubic metre capacity in its RSW tanks was placed in July 2021 and the hull was built in at the Karstensen yard in Poland before being brought to Skagen for outfitting. Sille Marie has been built to the yard’s own design, optimised in collaboration with the owners.

This entailed fine-tuning the hull design and integrating this with a large-diameter, slow-running propeller, in collaboration with engine supplier MAN. There’s also a heavy-duty 622kW/h battery pack, providing a full power supply for limited periods, as well as delivering peak shaving to streamline the overall energy consumption onboard.

The main engine is a 2920kW MAN 8L27/38, driving a 4700mm MAN VBS860 propeller via a Renk RSVL-1120 reduction gear. A 1650kW/2250kVA AvK DSG 99 M1-6W shaft generator supplies electrical power, backed up by a pair of 556kWe Volvo Penta D16 auxiliaries. All this comes with a Power Management System (PMS) which manages energy consumption and automatic start-up of the diesel generators. A UPS/clean power for 230V is installed, so the ship’s frequency can flow between 50 and 60Hz. This allows for a 17% reduction in the main engine’s RPM.

Energy efficient

Most of Sille Marie’s systems are electrical, including the fish pumps and the deck equipment, which routes energy to the battery pack when shooting away. In addition, there is heat recovery from all engines, LED lighting throughout and numerous other measures taken to optimise energy consumption.

The FB-H 2330×4500 flap rudder and SR662 steering system are from Kongsberg, and the 700kW thrusters are FU-45-LTC-1550 units from Brunvoll.

MacGregor Rapp Marine supplied the full electric deck layout with three 60-tonne trawl winches and a pair of 80-tonne net drums, plus a 2×30-tonne double net drum and a single 60-tonne net drum. These are aligned to the hydraulic gates at the stern, each of which is outfitted with hydraulic control rods. A pair of net sounder winches is mounted on the aft gantry, which also supports the SeaQuest net crane, providing an arc of access across the aft working deck.

The two 24-inch fish pumps and associated cable drums and hose reels are also from MacGregor Rapp Marine, and Sille Marie can pump catches from either quarter, with catches routed to the selected tanks which are chilled by a twin PTG FrioNordica, 870kW system with a 2 x 748,000kCal/h capacity. The vacuum system is from Önnereds Svets, and Sille Marie has a Kapp Optim-ice slurry ice system.

Crew comfort

Accommodation on board Sille Marie is a pair of engineer’s cabins at main deck level, where there are also laundry and fitness facilities. There are a further five two-berth ensuite cabins in the superstructure, as well as a sick bay and an oilskin store.

These areas have been placed as far as practical from the propeller and other noise sources, plus there’s some serious sound insulation that has gone into the cabins and other areas to keep them as quiet as possible. The crew’s day room, mess and galley are all located in the superstructure.

Sille Marie’s owners went to Ålseund companies Marineelektronikk and Furuno Norge for the navigation, fishfinding and comms systems, which were installed by KS Elektro. The main matrix is a Furuno BlueBridge, presenting a programmable display of feeds from the electronic systems on board, presented on 55-inch widescreen Hatteland monitors.

The key fishfinders are the low-frequency FSV-25 and high-frequency FSV-75 sonars, plus a Furuno Imagenex TS-360 trawl sonar and a Scanmar Scanbas 365 setup of trawl sensors. The log is a Furuno CI68 and the sounders are Furuno FCV-38 and FSS-3BB units, with a Wassp F3Xi 3D sonar. Plotters are a pair of Tecdis T-2138A ecdis sets and two MaxSea Time Zero units, plus an Olex system.The Karstensen yard in Skagen has delivered the new pelagic trawler to Sille Marie AS, a relatively young venture between Carl Aamodt and the Salthaug family from Sogne.