By Jim McGaw
PORTSMOUTH/TIVERTON — What’s a big boat like you doing in a river like this?
That may have been the question on the minds of many local residents today, Oct. 24, when they saw the 210-foot-long Conti slowly make its way past Stone Bridge and into the Sakonnet River.
The shallow water vessel, which has a breadth of 53 feet, is used for geotechnical surveying, mainly for wind farm projects. Its most recent project, according to information available online, is Bay State Wind, which plans to construct up to 110 wind turbine generators about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.
The project includes up to 186 miles of associated inter-array cabling, two co-located offshore substations, export cables, and an onshore operations and maintenance facility with an associated base port during the operation phase.
The undersea export cable will traverse both federal waters and state waters of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, ultimately making landfall within the Brayton Point Commerce Center in Somerset.
Conti, which left Davisville around 4:25 a.m. on Thursday, slowed to almost a crawl as it made its way south on the Sakonnet River. The vessel, which in a different configuration is also used as an offshore supply ship, employs a dynamic positioning system to maintain position when on site.
Earlier this year, Conti did survey work for the South Fork Wind Farm, a planned offshore wind farm of 15 turbines located 30 miles east of Montauk; as well as Ocean Wind, a planned offshore wind farm 15 miles off the New Jersey coast.