Wale Marine South Africa has designed and developed a new Rhino Marine range of very robust, rigid and reliable workboats.
The new fully-outfitted Rhino Marine 950 is an extremely effective purpose-built workboat for special offshore Dive SRP operations.
Wale Marine, together with SMIT Subsea, developed the craft. Hull improvements were made and it was constructed in high density polyethylene to specifically withstand the mistreatment endemic to offshore operations and to withstand typical offshore bow-catcher boat landings. The sponsons give the boat the robustness being made from 15mm HDPE pipe sections.
Designed initially for offshore mother ship dive operations during installations, the Rhino 950 is tailor-made for multi-mission operations, including servicing and repairs, crew transfers, as well as coastal and near-shore operations in varying sea and weather conditions.
Powered by a single Steyr MO306H43WJ 295 HP inboard diesel engine mounted via a ZF gearbox to a high-performance UltraJet UJ305HT waterjet, during sea trials the Steyr-UltraJet propulsion package achieved 22 knots – despite the specification only requiring a minimum speed of 15 knots.
The Rhino 950 is the largest workboat in the range but can be transported in a 12m flat-rack. It can also carry a spare outboard, if required.