A fixed tension winch is used by Norwegian fishing gear company Selstad when delivering new warps, and spooling wire or Dyneema on board under a constant tension increases stability and prolongs the working lifetime of the warps.
A couple of visitors to Selstad’s quayside in Måløy have been rigged with new warps, and these have been carefully spooled on board under constant tension. First Austevoll pelagic vessel Harvest, followed a few days later by Zephyr from Shetland.
‘The fixed tension winch is so that we can provide tension under controlled and safe conditions. Services on the vessel and/or the equipment is typically performed either by us or other MMG firms at the same time as the tension spooling goes on. This makes the tension spooling service a fairly time efficient operation,’ said Marit Selstad, head of sales and marketing at Selstad.
‘Harvest is one of the few vessels that has Dyneema fibre warps instead of traditional steel wire rope. But this also needs tension spooling to get the right winding, in the same way as steel warps.’
‘After some years with Dyneema warps, they wanted to turn the warps end-for-end,’ said Selstad key account manager Thomas Hjelle.
‘So we took off the 2000 metre Dyneema warps and delivered them back to the vessel’s winches with tension varying between 14 to 18 tonnes. In addition, we spliced new eyes on the warps.’
