WHERE IN THE WORLD are Those Pesky Cableship

ARE THOSE PESKY CABLESHIPS?

BY REBECCA SPENCE

The global cableship fleet certainly hit the ground running this year! With Southern Cross Next, PEACE Cable, and Share all seeing continued progress in landing and completion of final splices. As these projects reach completion of their wet plants, the vessels will immediately move on to their next assignments with little to no break between. According to the SubTel Forum Submarine Cable Database, 44 systems will be ready for service in 2022. This is a lofty goal considering 2021 had 33 and 2020 had 38 reach completion.

For this issue of Where in the World are Those Pesky Cableships I pulled the AIS tracking data to cover January and February data. At that time, 66 percent of the tracked vessels had reached their current destinations. Of that 66 percent, six vessels were on hiatus for repairs, maintenance or crew changes and spent several weeks in the same location. These include the Ile de Batz which has been moored at Daman Ship Repair in Dunkirk since late December, and the Subaru which spent all of January and February at the Yokohama Dockyard in Japan.

Figure 1 breaks down the 34 percent of vessels that had not yet reached their destinations. Seven were set to arrive within a week, two were a week out, two would arrive within two weeks and one was over 4 weeks to its next destination. The fleet and their crews face a busy year ahead, but the last several years have shown that they are capable of consistent progress.

Figure 1: Vessel Time Remaining to Destination

Figure 3: Ile de Sein at Coogee Beach

In Figure 2 you see the breakdown of Regions of Activity for the first two months of the year. The EMEA region is currently seeing the most vessel activity with 46 percent of AIS data coming from the region from both Equiano and Peace cable wet plant. AustralAsia is the second busiest region as OAC, Southern Cross NEXT and others go into the water. The landing of Southern Cross NEXT can be seen in Figure 2 landing in Savusavu, Fiji curtesy of João Soares in early February and Figure 3 shows the Ile De Sein landing at Coogee Beach courtesy Southern Cross NEXT Cable. Figure 4 shows the EMEA will continue to be a top region of activity as systems like 2Africa and others begin their wet plants.

Thank you to everyone posting these magnificent cableship photos. My favorite this month comes from SBSS with the Bold Maverick in Rognan, Norway.

Please tag @subtelforum to highlight your vessel in the next issue of SubTel Forum Magazine. Until next time, smooth sailing. STF

REBECCA SPENCE is the Project Manager from Submarine Telecoms Forum. Rebecca possessed more than 10 years’ experience as an analyst and database manager, including for the small business division of prominent government contractor, General Dynamics IT. She is a regular contributor to SubTel Forum Magazine and is based out of Hillsborough, North Carolina USA.

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