Thickness Measurement for Fishing, Aquaculture and Cargo Vessels in Tórshavn

Inspection services for ships at Tórshavn

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where vessels are gauged in the Faroe Islands

In Tórshavn, fishing vessels lie at the harbour quays between seasons and trips, and that is where most afloat gauging takes place: fish holds or refrigerated seawater tanks emptied and cleaned, fuel and ballast tanks opened by the crew, trawl and processing decks clear of gear. Cargo ships and the ferry give shorter windows at their berths, suited to deck, hatch or ramp details and a limited number of tanks. Salmon-farm vessels can be met in Tórshavn or at their bases in other harbours around the islands, which are reached by road through the tunnels and over the bridges that connect most of the archipelago.

For docking, MEST, the Faroese shipyard group, has a yard in the centre of Tórshavn with slipways and another at Skála on Eysturoy, and between them they repair, rebuild and maintain fishing vessels and other ships from the islands and from Greenland. A vessel on a slipway or in dock gives access to shell plating, bottom, rudder, stern frame and sea chests, and gauging there is coordinated with the yard's programme and the attending surveyor. Ships too large for the Faroese yards dock abroad, typically in Denmark, Norway or Poland, and a Tórshavn call before that docking is a good point to take pre-docking readings.

• Tórshavn harbour quays — fish-hold, refrigerated seawater tank and fuel-tank gauging on trawlers and longliners between trips or seasons.
• MEST slipways in central Tórshavn — shell, bottom and stern-area readings on fishing vessels and smaller ships hauled out for repair.
• MEST yard at Skála, Eysturoy — docking and repair gauging on larger Faroese and visiting vessels.
• Ferry and ro-ro berths — deck, ramp and door-area checks on the international ferry and cargo ships during their calls.
• Salmon-farm bases around the islands — well-boat hold, seawater piping and crane-foundation checks on aquaculture vessels.

Faroese status, North Atlantic fisheries and inspection rules

The Faroe Islands are self-governing within the Kingdom of Denmark and, unlike Denmark, are outside both the EU and the EEA. The islands run their own maritime administration and ship register, including an international register used by Faroese and foreign owners, and they take part in the IMO as an associate member. For gauging, the practical consequences are twofold: Faroese-flag fishing vessels follow the islands' own rules where they are not classed by an IACS society, and EU-specific measures do not apply in Faroese waters. A voyage between Tórshavn and an EU port counts as a voyage to a third country under the EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime, which affects the ferry and cargo operators rather than the condition of their ships.

Ships on the routes from Tórshavn meet Paris MoU port state control when they call in Denmark, Iceland or other European ports, so the condition of a Faroese cargo ship or ferry is examined regularly at the far end of its route. For the fishing fleet, the harsh operating conditions are the main driver: pelagic trawlers with refrigerated seawater tanks, demersal trawlers with heavily loaded gallows and winches, and longliners that spend weeks at sea all build up corrosion and fatigue in predictable places. The salmon farms, working in exposed fjords, put similar demands on well boats and service vessels. Classed fishing vessels follow their society's rules for the type, and owners often add gauging between surveys, because losing a season to unexpected steel work hurts far more than an extra inspection.

Wherever a ship is outside a sulphur emission control area, the global 0.50% sulphur cap applies, and many of the ships calling at Tórshavn meet it with an exhaust gas cleaning system rather than compliant fuel. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it corrode quickly in service, especially on open-loop systems, and are worth adding to the gauging scope.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Tórshavn

The sequence for a thickness measurement job at Tórshavn is short and written down, so the yard, the surveyor and the superintendent know who arranges what.

Vágar Airport is the only airport in the Faroe Islands, linked to Tórshavn by road through a subsea tunnel, and its flights connect with Copenhagen and a few other European cities. The Faroes are not part of the Schengen area, and entry rules differ from Denmark's, so the visa route for technicians from India is checked for each job and started early. The ship's agent or the vessel owner arranges harbour access, and access to the yards is agreed with MEST through the owner.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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