A 183-foot-long lift boat with jack-up legs taller than the Statue of Liberty was to have arrived at Bridgeport Harbor in Connecticut last night, after which it will make its way to the waters off Wainscott Beach, where it will be used in the initial offshore construction of the South Fork Wind farm.
The Jill, a Seacor Marine lift boat, is traveling from its home port in the Gulf of Mexico to Barnum Landing in Bridgeport Harbor accompanied by a 201-foot support vessel, Seacor Marine’s Brave. After around two weeks of equipment loadout and mobilization, the Jill and the Brave are to travel the 95 nautical miles, taking around 19 hours, to their position about one-third of a mile off Wainscott Beach, at the end of Beach Lane in that hamlet.
There, the 12-turbine wind farm’s export cable will make landfall before traveling on an underground path to an interconnection station off Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton, where it will connect to the electrical grid.
The lift boat will be involved in horizontal directional drilling to create a pathway and install a conduit for the wind farm’s export cable, which will be buried roughly 80 feet under the beach in the sea-to-shore transition area, starting around 1,500 feet offshore and extending under the beach and to the parking lot at the end of Beach Lane.
The Jill will rise to around 15 to 20 feet above the water, and is to remain off Wainscott Beach for about three months. The Brave is to make twice-weekly trips to Bridgeport to collect equipment and make crew changes.
The vessels had been expected at Barnum Landing last weekend, but weather along the route delayed them, a South Fork Wind spokeswoman said in an email on Monday.
Onshore construction continues on Beach Lane this week, with a contractor continuing to mobilize the site and install a casing ahead of the horizontal directional drilling. A pilot hole for that drilling is to be made this week.
The contractor is also excavating and installing tie-ins to a vault between Bathgate Road and Montauk Highway in Wainscott. Foundation installation at the interconnection station also continues this week.
A vessel carrying the export cable itself is due in March. The wind farm will be approximately 35 miles off Montauk Point. Its 12 turbine foundations are to be installed starting in May and the turbines placed on the foundations in August.
South Fork Wind, New York State’s first offshore wind farm, is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2023.
