A new cable winch designed specifically to handle Hampiðjan’s DynIce Optical Data Cable attracted plenty of attention at last week’s IceFish exhibition in Iceland – and it also landed the company the award for the best new product.
The development of the DynIce Optical Data (DOD) winch follows the development of the fibre-optic data cable which takes data transfer from undersea equipment such as headline sonars to a completely new level. This high-capacity cable requires some careful handling, so the best option was to develop a winch specially to handle it.
It’s designed in collaboration with a Dutch specialist and has been manufactured in Spain by Naust Marine to maintain a steady 800kg tension on the main drum, and has a new approach to the cable layering to avoid pinching or the cable catching in bights – which could break the fibre-optic connection. An arm arranges the cable precisely on the shallow drum.
The DOD winch is designed for fishing, but is also useful in other industries where large amounts of data need to be transmitted from significant depths to control stations above water. Hampiðjan is confident that the winch and the fibre-optic cable will play a significant role in fishing, as the volume of data it can handle is as good as unlimited.
