Alfreð Tulinius and Bárður Hafsteinsson, naval engineers at Nautic ehf, will be responsible for the design.
The design and testing of the model is expected to be fully completed by June 2014, and then a decision will be made as to whether three fresh fish trawlers will be built. If an agreement is reached, the first trawler to be delivered will arrive in mid-2016.
A draft design of the trawlers, which are 55m in length and 13.5m wide, has already been completed.
The Ceiliktrans Shipyard is currently building a pelagic fishing vessel for HB Grandi.
A big change
In other news from HB Grandi, the new equipment installed as part of the Helga María refit has taken some getting used to.
The freezer trawler was refitted as a fresher last year, and according to skipper Eiríkur Ragnarsson, the equipment that was fitted during the refit has worked well, but it has been the grader in particular that has been a struggle to work with.
“We still have to get to grips with this and the sophisticated computer management system that runs it,” said Mr Ragnarsson.
For a skipper, it’s a big change running a fresher trawler after several decades of skippering a factory vessel.
“I’m enjoying the change, even though it hasn’t been a long time so far and so it’s not easy to say much yet. I can’t hide the fact that it’s more stressful. On a freezer you could always get through a trip even though you might lose three days to bad weather, while on a fresher three days of heavy weather can ruin a trip. There has been no shortage of rough weather this winter. It seems that the depressions are deeper than in the past and the wind is stronger. But in spite of that, fishing has been excellent and we have been able to keep fishing,” Mr Ragnarsson said.
