A new longliner/gill netter completed at the Alkor Shipyard in Poland is on its way home to Iceland, bringing to an end one chapter of the new vessel’s long story – just as another opens.
Stormur started life in Newfoundland and was laid up without being completed as its original owners lost the part-built boat to the bank. A few years later, Steindór Sigurgeirsson of Stormur Seafoods in Iceland and skipper Axel Jónsson located the boat and took it to Gdansk to be completed.
The boat’s length was more than at the Alkor yard and it has been fitted out as a longliner and gillnetter, featuring diesel-electric propulsion, a 63,000 hook Mustad longlining hardware and a system of handling the gear through a chamber below the surface, as was pioneered on Norwegian longliner Loran.
With the boat completed and on its way home to Iceland, things have changed. Owner Steindór Sigurgeirsson is looking to sell this innovative new vessel, which is equipped for either freezing or handling fresh catches, and is confident of a quick sale.
‘There has been interest from Iceland, Norway, Russia and the Faroes’ he said. ‘We’ve already sold the quotas and the Stormur Seafoods processing plant in Hafnarfjörður has also been sold.’
Look out next week for the December issue of Hook & Net, with a full report on Stormur.
