Pennant Buoys

Dropping a 22.500 kg Delta Flipper anchor in the water is easy enough, but how do you get it back? You need an anchor handling tug like our tug. On relatively shallow water like the North Sea, we use the anchor and pennant buoy system. That means the anchor is connected to the anchor wire of the crane barge on the top side and on the bottom side of the anchor is another wire connected. This wire is called the pennant wire and is transferred to the tug first with a large buoy connected to the end. The pennant is spooled on our winch until the anchor is on our stern, the cranebarge slacks its anchor wire after which we're proceeding to the anchor location. On the required position, the anchor is lowered on the sea floor. The pennant is longer than the water depth of course, and when the anchor is holding, we let go the pennant and buoy overboard. The buoy is big enough to hold the weight of the pennant and keep itself afloat. When you have to bring in the anchor again, you only have to pick up the buoy and start pulling on the pennant until the anchor is on your stern again. These buoys need maintenance and that's what we did this morning; we changed out the buoy of port side 5 anchor. On the picture you can see the old buoy on the left with the running shackle still connected to the pennant and the new buoy on the right.