We at Commercial Rib Charter are unique in the industry in providing highly specialised dive support vessels and services. Our two dive vessels, CRC Sentinel and CRC Tempest, are well equipped for offshore diving and meet the highest possible IMCA standards on design and servicing. Our vessels are ideal for a wide range of projects, including cable burial/installation, underwater cutting and salvage, ship maintenance, cathodic/scour protection and underwater inspection.
Our flagship 20m catamaran, CRC Sentinel, features an IMCA 3 diver air/nitrox dive spread complete with virtually all equipment to the end of the Fibron 125m umbilicals, including high pressure compressor, LED lights, HD cameras, 200 bar carbon composite cylinders and top-spec AxSub video recording software.
Sentinel’s key selling point however is the built-in 4-point anchor spread which provides safe and secure anchoring of the vessel in depths of over 50 meters. Featuring 4x Hercules Hydraulics winches fitted on deck, each coupled to 450m Dyneema, 27m of chain and one 200kg high-holding power (HPP) anchor, Sentinel provides the essential safety assurances on vessel positioning for divers and supervisors during a dive. Additionally, using the hydraulic winch remote control, our vessel master can smoothly finetune the vessel’s location to within just a few meters of a desired position (such as outfall, subsea cable or offshore installation) without the need to reposition anchors or start engines. As far as we know, Sentinel is the only vessel of its kind and available for charter in Europe that can do this!
At the smaller end of the scale our 12m Cabin Rib, CRC Tempest, has been one of our most popular vessels to charter since joining the fleet. With the ability to mobilise by road, Tempest can be dispatched rapidly, and similar to Sentinel, is provided with a plethora of dive equipment as standard, including umbilicals, lights, cameras, cylinders and recording equipment. Charterers are drawn to Tempest’s size, weight and excellent manoeuvrability (thanks to the Hamilton waterjets), along with the IMCA certification and auditing that is often not found in other nearshore or coastal dive vessels on the market.
In the coming months, our dive division at CRC will also be home to a state-of-the-art ‘scuba replacement pack’ (SRP), essentially a portable dive spread that will be IMCA DO40 compliant and feature much of the same equipment found on our larger dive vessels. This portable spread will complement our wider crew transfer vessel fleet and can be loaded onto the deck of our catamarans, Cabin Ribs and even our 8.8m Open Ribs. We have identified an area of the market where small IMCA compliant dive spreads are in demand for nearshore or coastal diving, and look forward to sharing the full specification soon.
For more information about all our dive support services please head to our website and check out this video of CRC Sentinel showcasing her dive equipment and capability during a recent cable laying project in the Netherlands.
