Yes, you can navigate safely through a windfarm!

 

I was recently invited to participate in an offshore wind simulator up in Middletown, Rhode Island. Marine operations modeling and simulation.

The United states maritime resource center (USMRI) is a not-for-profit 501C3 that is open to all stakeholders, commercial, recreational fisherman, or anyone wishing to experience this firsthand as

 well as for US Coast guard training.

For the program, offshore wind developer Orsted’s Revolution wind farm was selected to model. They used actual wind farm survey data, as well as manufacturing data to create the towers, turbines, and related structures. The turbines themselves are slated to be Siemens Gamesa 11 megawatt turbines atop a monopile tower and the blades were about 95 feet off the sea surface. There were also substations built into the model.

The turbines are set up there at 1nm x 1nm, but please note that the wind farms further south is to be set a bit closer at .08nm x 1nm. Additionally, they threw in a few sailboats, Coast guard vessels and others to add obstacles and realism.

We had a choice of vessels to operate, either an 80ft commercial fishing trawler or a 31 foot Contender center console recreational fishing vessel with twin outboards hanging off the transom. Sea and weather conditions were changed on demand, and the team and I got to experience pretty much everything they could throw at us, high winds, big seas, rain, darkness fog, etc. The simulator was realistic enough to make you seasick if you are prone to that. I noticed that my sea legs actually kicked in and some others leaned against a wall or held onto furniture! The floor in the room was stationary and it was your eyes and ears that put you in motion and it was very realistic!

Regardless of the conditions given it was clear to me that if you can’t navigate through a wind farm
, you don’t belong on a boat. Even under extreme conditions, I was able to remain clearly out of collision range all the time. The navigation lights and beacons on each tower were plainly visible. We were able to use the radar system as well, and after a small bit of tweaking, each tower remained clearly distinguishable just like any marker or buoy found at sea.

I would really like to see one of these simulators built in Southern New Jersey so even more mariners of all kinds could try it out, I hear there is another one down in Maryland at the Maritime Institute of Technology & Graduate Studies (MITAGS) facility. Overall, it was a great learning experience that I highly recommend.

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