Skipper Tommy Tulloch and engineer Michael Leslie have taken delivery of the new Keila K-121, designed and completed by Vestværftet in Hvide Sande on a hull built at the Nauta yard in Poland. The trawler carries a Kirkwall registration, although Tommy Tulloch’s home is on Westray, the most north-westerly of the Orkney islands.
He said that he expects to work with a crew of seven to eight as they fish trips of around ten days for groundfish species, concentrating on cod, haddock and saithe on fishing grounds from Rockall in the west and as far north as Shetland and waters south of the Faroe Islands. Around 80% of their landings are in Scrabster and the rest landed to other ports in the region.
Keila meets Tommy Tulloch’s requirements for a new fishing vessel and the order was placed with Vestværft two years ago. The older trawler it replaces also made a call at Vestværft earlier this year for alterations to be made before steaming to Surinam to fish for its new owners.
The new Keila measures 28 metres overall with a beam of 8.20 metres, and is powered by an eight-cylinder Caterpillar 3508 driving a Heimdal Marine gearbox two PTOs and with a 9.52:1 reduction to turn a 2800mm Heimdal controllable pitch mounted in high efficiency nozzle. This provides a combination capable of delivering optimum towing power as well as fuel economy. Gensets are a pair of Volvo Penta D7 delivering 149 KVA.
Rapp (Scotland) supplied Keila deck equipment and the installation was carried out by Hvide Sande company AS Scan. This includes a pair of trawl winches controlled using Rapp’s Pentagon autotrawl, two split net drums, bagging winches and the aft trawl block arrangement.
The hydraulic installation also includes a 30kW power pack, a 160hp Hundested ST 4 bow thruster and a deck crane. As well as handling Keila hydraulics, AS Scan also supplied the MT1600 steering gear, pump units, starting equipment, alarms and the rudder control system.
The full package of electronics has been supplied by Woodsons of Aberdeen.
Keila’s fish handling deck has been fitted out by VCU with a full sorting, gutting and washing system, as well as hoppers in the fishroom which has capacity for 1400 boxes. Nordkøl supplied the two 4500kg Buus slush icemakers and the fishroom chiller system.
