There’s not been much public blogging lately because I’ve been posting the quantum notes in private, for the project which I’m supporting to spinout from Heriot Watt university.
There’s a different big infrastructure project going on, and we have a way to get pictures of some of the components that it takes to build.
We’d watched the Xiang Tai Kou backing in to the deep water dock at Leith on the evening of 11 October 2025, trying to see from 2 miles up town (with binoculars) what she was carrying. Eight huge cylinders .. monoplies for the Inch Cape windfarm. For scale, the Targe Guillemot holding position in front of it is 25m long. The big ship is 231m long and 46m wide.
This was the first arrival of a procession of these Chinese flagged heavy deck cargo vessels, last port Suez. It was preceeded by months of dredging, in the channels on the Forth as well as in the entry to the main Leith dock behind the lock.
Th operation also had at least three tugs involved, the GPS Avenger, Union Onyx and Union Topaz, moving and shepherding the big hulls being used for the material dredged up.
The next ship in was the Sheng Chang; this image has people underneath the monopiles.
This was the third ship in; there were 8 bogies with 10 axles each underneath the cylinders.
This is the start of the next stage, where the heavy lift vessel loaded on 4 or 5 of the monopiles and went off to set them in place at the windfarm, which is more or less due East of Dundee.
Inch Cape wind farm is offshore Montrose, connected to Cockenzie by subsea cable. The lift ship, made in China, is owned by a Belgian company, Jan de Nul, headquartered in Luxembourg.
Cunning Systems 