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I have bit of a soft spot for small perfectly formed offshore vessels and the Acergy Sabia is one. It seems to have started life as the Seaway Sabia back in 2001 as one of the Stolt Offshore fleet, and as the companies have changed hands has managed to keep busy, and possibly off the corporate radar. So now it appears with a Subsea Seven logo on the funnel, but no-one has bothered to change the name since the last name change. It has a deck area of 128 m2 and an unknown bhp and bollard pull, but it is still out there being useful.
Back in the day this fine ship was the most powerful in the world with 25000 bhp giving it a bollard pull of 280 tons. It is a UT 742 built at Unsteinvik in 1999. It is the second commercial vessel to have been involved in the Kursk rescue efforts back in August 2000 when it was recruited to carry the Royal Navy rescue sub the LR5 into the Barents Sea, although it never got to launch. Curiously back in 2000 very few shipowners had websites - difficult to believe isn't it - but there it was, and my original site had been up and running for a couple of years by then, with details of a lot of offshore ships including this one. So I was at work one day and my wife rang me to tell me that she had been taken by surprise because CNN had been on the phone to find out more about this ship.
In recent times an inlet on the eastern side of the Shetland Islands called Dales Voe has been promoted as a possible base for decommissioning oil rigs. To this end about £12 million has been spent on extending the quay of which various enterprise organisations put forward £2.39 million. The first candidate, the pentagon design Buchan A is alongside and has had quite a bit of topsides removed, apparently using the rig's own crane. According to the Lerwick Harbour Board website the warehouse has been available for rent for £54,000 pa.