Grand ambition: Inside the revolutionary expedition vessel Project REV
Set to launch in 2020, a revolutionary expedition vessel is kicking off a Norwegian billionaire’s three-point bid to save the world’s oceans. Caroline White reports on a project of staggering proportions
For some superyacht owners, the delivery of their boat is the end rather than the beginning of the story. The creation of their vision – sketching out the lines with their designer, flicking through fabric swatches, even bartering with shipyards, and then watching steel bones bulk out into the embodiment of their dream – is the joy of the endeavour. The adventure was the project. So when they’ve taken their toy for a spin around the Med, they sell and start again. But what if you could build a thrilling, rewarding and ongoing project into the boat? The booming popularity of explorer yachts shows that owners are starting to do just that.
Norwegian Kjell Inge Røkke is going further than anyone has before with his in-build Project REV. When completed in 2020 it will be the largest vessel of its kind in the world – but that is incidental to this extraordinary story.
Through his shipping and fisheries businesses, as well as his yachting, Røkke has watched the world’s oceans sicken from human pollution and plunder. Røkke is also signed up to the Giving Pledge, originated by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, which is “an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by inviting the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit to giving more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes either during their lifetime or in their will”.
The bountiful reserves and revolutionary minds behind the pledge have led to ambitious projects – including the Gateses’ aim to eradicate malaria worldwide. Røkke’s focus is the health of the oceans and his mission is threefold: to build an environmental hub, the World Ocean Headquarters, at Fornebu in Norway; to create an open source ocean data platform; and, top of the list, to build the world’s largest research and expedition vessel.
Nothing like this boat, unassumingly named REV (research expedition vessel), has ever been built. It was conceived in early 2016 at around 140 metres but has grown to 182.9 metres to pack in a mind-boggling array of facilities and research equipment that its designer Espen Øino describes as “a showcase of European sub-sea and shipbuilding technology”. In essence, as REV Ocean CEO Nina Jensen says, it is a “floating think tank” that will bring together scientists, tech experts, innovators and even mathematicians, not just to discuss the problems facing our seas, but to solve them – sometimes on the spot. But it will also have a significant superyacht element, with high quality interior design and accommodation, so that charterers can join expeditions and help support the running of the vessel. The diesel electric boat will therefore be a hybrid in more than one sense.
“Røkke was particularly inspired by Graeme Hart’s Ulysses programme, and seeing that there was another way of building a vessel like this, without taking the normal [yacht-building] path,” says George Gill, the owner’s representative and REV project director, referring to the New Zealand billionaire’s 107 metre and 116 metre explorer yachts, which were built at Norwegian commercial yard Kleven rather than at a superyacht yard.
Experience in building ultra-tough seagoing vessels, as well as a smaller price tag, make commercial yards an increasingly popular choice for explorer yachts (Lürssen, incidentally, saw which way the wind was blowing and bought an equity stake in Kleven). Røkke, however, settled on Norwegian yard Vard, attracted by its in-house hydro-dynamics, naval architecture and engineering expertise.
He then assembled his principal players: Jensen, who was CEO of WWF Norway, will guide the mission; Gill, a chief engineer who has worked on Alfa Nero, will oversee the build; Øino was tapped for design, drawing on his expedition yacht experience, which includes 72 metre Cloudbreak; and designer Johnny Horsfield and his H2 Yacht Design studio, which also worked on Hart’s first 107 metre Ulysses (now Andromeda), for the interiors.
The design developed over about a year, during which time scientists advised on the kind of boat that would be most useful to them, and the team tailored the project accordingly. For one thing, REV will get to pretty much anywhere they want to go. It has a mind-boggling 21,120 nautical mile range at 11 knots, massive waste capacity and stores for 90 people for 114 days – and that can be extended by 20 days using deck containers. It can carry 28 guests and 54 crew; 60 scientists and 30 crew; or 28 passengers, 24 scientists and 30 crew depending on the type of voyage.
“My feeling is it started off more as a yacht and it has been moved more and more towards research,” says Øino, noting, for example, that space reserved for a large spa became an R& D lab. “The one thing that is quite evident is that [researchers] all have different needs, so the key word is flexibility,” says Øino. “They often come with their own equipment, so we have a massive deck where we can store up to 12 20ft containers with a massive crane that can take up to 15 tonnes, with a reach of 25 metres.”
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