Skipper Jón Valgeirsson of Icelandic fresher trawler Bergey said that he has seen his warps spooled perfectly onto the trawler’s drums for the first time now that Hampiðjan has introduced its new wire tensioner.
‘This is a vital piece of equipment and I don’t see how we managed before without it,’ Jón Valgeirsson said.
Bergey fishes from the Westmann Islands, where Hampiðjan has also opened a new net loft facility that is in the process of being extended. The new wire tensioning machine has been installed as part of bolstering the services Hampiðjan offers the Westmann Islands fleet and this is the second machine the company has acquired. The first one has proved to be highly successful, operated by Hampiðjan partner company Cosmos Trawl at Hirtshals in Denmark.
‘We’ve taken new warps on board hundreds of time before, but this is the first time they have been spooled exactly right onto the drums. It makes a huge difference and everything has worked perfectly,’ Jón Valgeirsson added.
Prior to Bergey’s most recent trip, new warps were spooled onto its drums. The new wire was supplied by Hampiðjan’s Westmann Islands branch, and spooled on board under load using the tensioning machine.
‘We concreted a base for the machine here on the dock,’ branch manager Ingi Freyr Ágústsson said.
‘By threading the wire through the wire tensioning machine, we can set resistance to a fixed level, so that warps are spooled on board trawlers’ drums under a load. For smaller trawlers such as Bergey, a load tension of four to eight tonnes is suitable, and for larger trawlers we can set the tension higher,’ he said.
According to skipper Jón Valgeirsson, up to now, trawl warps have been tensioned at sea by spooling them in with the gear in the water or by hanging blocks from them, but this has never been fully satisfactory.
‘It’s always possible to tension them to an extent in flat calm weather, although it never works out as well as we would like. It’s only now that we are seeing 100% perfect spooling onto the drums and I would never have believed this if I hadn’t seen it for myself,’ he said.
