Winter of Ladram E-24

The latest delivery from Parkol Marine Engineering in Whitby, Winter of Ladram left its home port of Salcombe on its maiden fishing trip

She was launched in early July with sea trials and final delivery exactly a month later. She was built at Parkols Whitby yard for Waterdance Ltd, based in Exeter who are part of the Greendale group. In recent years Waterdance have invested heavily in their fleet of over twenty fishing vessels working out of various ports in SW England, Winter of Ladram is the latest sign of this investment. She is named after one of the directors grand daughters, ‘Winter’. She is the second vessel Parkol has built for Waterdance Ltd., the first being Amanda of Ladram built in 2021. The style is very similar to Amanda of Ladram, which is a gill netter.

 Winter of Ladram is a 21.0 metre crabber registered in Exeter as E 24 designed by Ian Paton at S C McAllister & Co Ltd and has a similar hull to that of the Amanda of Ladram. She is of round bilge form with a transom stern, bulbous bow with an overall length of 21.0m, a registered length of 16.49m, a beam of 7.7metres and a tonnage of 218 Tonnes.

A unique feature of Winter of Ladram is that she has been designed with over 3 metres of headroom under the shelter deck to ensure plenty of stowage space for pots when shifting grounds. The vessel will be skippered by Richard Carroll who is moving with his entire crew from another vessel in the Waterdance fleet, Nichola of Ladram.

Crabber Layout 

Winter of Ladram is of standard crabber deck layout with the hauler up forward on the starboard side, The galley, mess deck and changing area across the full width of the vessel aft, leaving a large deck area midships for handling the gear and processing the catch. Atop the shelter deck is the aluminium wheelhouse fitted out to a high standard by Parkols.

 The wheelhouse is offset to Starboard to ensure the skipper has really good vision of the hauling station just forward of the wheelhouse on the main deck. Below deck the vessel is divided, for forward to aft, a small fish room that accommodates a large pound for rope storage, two bait freezers, Aft of this is the large vivier tank, then the engine room and right aft the crew accommodation and steering compartment.

Working Deck

 The main working deck is dominated by the large 2 ton Britannia Slave hauler mounted forward on the starboard side with a hydraulic telescopic gantry to take the hauling block clear of the vessel side.  This is all mounted at the fore side of a larger cantilevered hatch that opens upwards with two hydraulic rams to enable plenty of space for hauling. Fitted on the underside of this hatch are three large floodlights to illuminate the area of sea around the hatchway when the hatch is open. Within this lifting hatch a second smaller hatch is fitted, just large enough for shooting the pots, allowing the main hatch to be closed to give the crew more protection from the weather when shooting the gear away.

 As the pots are hauled, the back rope is stowed on deck forward, clear of where the crew are working, the pots are passed across the table to remove the catch, then get cleaned and rebaited. Any bycatch or undersized crab removed from the pots are passed directly into an adjacent 300mm steel tube that passes right down through the hull ensuring any live creatures are returned to the sea very quickly.

Once the crabs are removed from the pots, they are placed in a holding tray that has two nicking stations alongside, once nicked they are placed into one of the steel tubes leading into the vivier tank. There are three other smaller separate sections of the vivier tank each with their own steel delivery tube, for keeping any lobster or large cock crabs separate from the main section where the crab are stored.

Once rebaited the pots are stowed further aft in the under shelter deck area ready for shooting again. This timber sheathed deck area is enormous, over 3 metres high and the full width of the vessel. It can easily hold several fleets of gear it the skipper opts to move fishing grounds, if necessary this area could probably hold around 500 pots.

Right forward on this deck there is a small gear store, to port a hatch leading down into the fish room, store and bait store. Directly above this hatch is a similar one in the shelter deck to allow bait gear etc to be passed directly down into the stores. At one side of this hatch is a hoist system operated by a small tugger winch mounted beneath the shelterdeck to make it easier to take bait from the freezers to the baiting stations on deck when at sea.

Moving below through this hatch there is a deep pound to the forward side for rope storage. Mounted on an overhead gantry above the pound is a rope hauler from John Leach Fishing. On the aft bulkhead of this fishroom are two specialist freezer doors to access the two freezer bait lockers. These two bait lockers have a combined capacity of 9 cubic metres. Both these doors incorporate a heat system to prevent the door seals from freezing up.  The refrigeration was supplied by SPX Refrigeration and Engineering Services LTD who also supplied the air conditioning for the boat.

 Aft of the bait store beneath the main deck is the large vivier tank, with a gross volume of 50,000 litres to hold in the region of 25 ton of crab. The vivier is accessible for landing the catch through a two piece flush watertight hatch in the main deck. To the port side of the main deck is a ladder with a hatch above, to give crew access to the shelterdeck.

 Moving aft on from the main deck is the accommodation unit, on the port side is the main access doorway into the dryroom with heated hanging space for oilskins, lifejackets, boots etc. At the aft end of this is a ‘utility space with washing machine, tumble drier, small sink and large freezer.

Moving from dryroom into the main accommodation area to forward there is an access stair to the wheelhouse, aft there is an access stair to the sleeping accommodation, then a separate toilet and roomy shower room. Straight ahead on the starboard side is the galley and mess deck. Along the forward bulkhead there is a stainless steel four ringed Lincat cooker with dark grey moulded worktops around it.

 To the left of the cooker is a large double door Liebher fridge. Aft is the galley table with ample room for all the crew.  As with all the accommodation the mess deck is fitted with air conditioning. Down below aft there are 5 separate cabins, a skipper’s cabin and four two berth cabins all well fitted out in light wood effect panelling with solid oak trims Each cabin has several 240 volt power sockets and the now essential USB charging points as well as air conditioning units.

Engine Room

 Just forward of this is the spacious engine room accessed from the dry room area on deck. The centre piece of the engine room is the Volvo Penta D16MH main engine rated at 1800 RPM and Reintjes gear box supplied by Marine Engineering (Looe) Ltd and fitted by Parkols.

This drives a four bladed propellor from Michigan Marine Propulsion Ltd ahead of a single rudder. There are also two  Volvo Penta D5A-TA Marine Gensets, also supplied by Marine Engineering (Looe) Ltd fitted on top of the two wing fuel tank to provide electrical power for the vessel.

 At the forward side of the main engine are two electrically driven Desmi pumps, to service the vivier tank through 150mm diameter pipework. Aft there are two electrically driven hydraulic pumps supplied by Hercules Hydraulics Ltd, in Devon to provide hydraulic power for the vessel and the power pack for the Wills Ridley steering gear. The two wing fuel tanks hold 18,000 litres and the 3 freshwater tanks forward have a capacity of 12,000 litres. Forward there is a Kort KT 90 Bow thruster supplied by Kort Propulsion Ltd.

The wheelhouse has all the electronics offset to starboard. They are concentrated around a KAB sliding wheelhouse chair and a large forward facing opening window giving the skipper a really great view of the hauling station forward on the deck below.

To the port side of the wheelhouse is an L shaped settee style seat set around a table and large screen monitor for use with the E log. As with the rest of the accommodation the wheelhouse is fitted with air conditioning units.

Outside the aft wheelhouse door is a large stern deck with the two life rafts in easily accessible positions. This area may also be used for pot storage during passage between fishing grounds.

 Forward of the wheelhouse on the shelterdeck is the small hatch for access from the main deck landing hatch, the central landing hatch and to the starboard side is the large, hinged hatch to open up the gear handling station.

Just ahead of this is secure stowage for the vessels anchor. Forward is the foremast with a traditional landing derrick and three large forward facing floodlights to light up the sea ahead of the vessel when searching for ends of the fleets of pots.

 The skipper plans to work about 3000 Gaelforce D shaped pots in flets (strings) of around 100,, hauling then very 2 to 3 days. He will be mainly working the SW crab grounds landing mainly into both Salcombe and Newlyn.

Wheelhouse electronics supplied by Echomaster Marine Ltd, Macduff

Communications/GMDSS:

2 x Icom IC-M510 VHF DSC Radio’s

1 x Sailor RT6210 VHF Radio

1 x ICS NAV6 Plus Paperless Navtex

1 x IC-GM1600MED GMDSS VHF

1 x VEP8 GPS EPIRB & Auto Housing

1 x Phonetek 10-Way Intercom system

1 x Digital Yacht 4G Connect Pro Dual Antenna

1 x Excel@Sea 60cm (unlimited data use) Ka band VSAT

Navigation & Heading:

1 x Simrad NSO EVO3S MFD with HALO-6 6ft Radar

1 x Simrad NSO EVO3S MFD with HALO-4 4ft Radar

1 x JRC JLR-21 GPS Compass

2 x Furuno GP-39 GPS Navigators

1 x Simrad V5035 Class A AIS Transceiver

 Chartplotters:

1 x Olex 3D Seabed Mapping Chartplotter with AIS, GRIB & HT Ground Discrimination

1 x Sodena Easywin Chartplotter with AIS, ARPA and Tides

Autopilot steering Controls:

1 x Navitron NT921 MKII Autopilot

1 x Navitron NT920WA Watch Alarm

2 x Navitron NT920 Rudder Angle Indicators

2 x Navitron NT990 Follow-Up Levers

Black Box Acoustic Fish Finding Equipment:

1 x Hondex HE-2900B Dual Band Echosounder with Hondex TD380 3kW Dual Range CHIRP Transducer

1 x Hondex Temperature Sensor

Entertainment/Security/Miscellaneous:

1 x Intellian I6PE 60cm TVRO system

1 x HikVision 7 camera IP CCTV system

1 x Hull mounted HD Colour Propeller/Rudder Observation camera

8 x AG Neovo 24″ Widescreen Monitors

1 x Mess Deck TV Repeater for Simrad HALO Radar

1 x Fusion RA70 Bluetooth Stereo system