SEVSAT from Ship Equip helps Rederi AB Transatlantic retain and attract key crew members
The statement comes from Thomas Andersson Vice President for procurement in Rederi AB Transatlantic. He explains: To get a job for an offshore vessel, you need highly experienced and motivated crew . In many ways you can say it is the crew that is awarded the contract rather than the vessel itself. In such an environment you cannot afford to lose good crew.
It will take time and it will cost you a small fortune to find a replacement. This was one of the important reasons Rederi AB Transatlantic looked at solutions to motivate the crew to stay with the company.
Rederi AB Transatlantic is a versatile ship owner with main offices in Skärhamn and operating a fleet of 38 vessels consisting of AHTS vessels, icebreakers and a range of RORO, ROLO and bulk vessels.
- With the amount of data transfer we have, SEVSAT is the most cost effective solution says Thomas Andersson. A quick look at the communication log shows that our vessels typically transmit around 20 Gb a month of data and voice traffic. These amounts are not viable with dial up - pay by the megabyte solutions. But you need them for backup if you for instance sail out of coverage in the Polar Regions, or because of antenna shadow. Interference with radars has happened too but rarely. But all three causes of disruption to the SEVSAT connection can be dealt with by proper forward planning he concludes.
The most frequently asked question from new crew is weather the vessel has Internet on board, current crew ask if bandwidth can be increasd Mr. Andersson says and explains:
- The availability of a connection is the key issue for all crew, both in order to address operational concerns and in relation to taking care of personal matters while on board. To stay in touch with family and friends is important to obtain a calm and focused work atmosphere. When the personal life can be handled well, the crew is more concentrated and relaxed in the work situation.
Another issue Thomas Andersson is concerned about is the maintenance systems, which are all online and rely on frequent updates:
- We have had incidents where the entire database onboard a vessel has become corrupt and needed to be reinstalled from land. In these cases we have arranged a temporary bandwidth increase from Ship Equip over the SEVSAT link, allowing us to do the reinstall of 100s of MB within hours. The availability of the connection has saved us a lot both in time and travel expenses for support personnel, but most importantly it has also prevented possible off hire of a vessel by quickly resolving technical issues over SEVSAT.
The Picture
The offshore vessel/icebreaker Vidar Viking with C-band SEVSAT at work in the Arctic sea.
Rederi AB Transatlantic is a versatile ship owner with main offices in
Skärhamn and operating a fleet of 38 vessels consisting of AHTS vessels, icebreakers and a range of RORO
, ROLO
and bulk vessels. More about Rederi AB Transatlantic here: http://www.rabt.se/
About Ship Equip:
SHIP EQUIP GROUP is the fastest growing maritime broadband provider worldwide. The C-band or Ku-band solution SEVSAT and the TV solution SETVRO from Ship Equip give ships cost efficient solutions for internet, e-mail, telephony and television. We have installed more than 2200 stabilized antennas all over the world, and have extensive experience in supporting our equipment in demanding maritime conditions.
The head office is situated in Ålesund, Norway with offices in Oslo, Houston, Seattle, Singapore, London and Reykjavik.