Acta Gemini starts long-term RWE charter at Sofia offshore wind farm

Acta Marine's newest service operation vessel, ACTA GEMINI, has completed its shakedown and mobilisation period and begun a long-term charter supporting RWE's Sofia offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom.

Operating from Grimsby, the vessel will provide offshore accommodation and walk-to-work services for technicians and specialists involved in the commissioning and the future operation and maintenance of the 1.4 GW site. Sofia lies on Dogger Bank in the North Sea, roughly 195 kilometres off the north-east coast of the United Kingdom, and once fully operational is expected to generate enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of 1.2 million homes in the country.

ACTA GEMINI is the third vessel in a series of four next-generation service operation vessel newbuildings. She was delivered in June 2026 by Tersan Shipyard and purpose-built for offshore wind maintenance work, with the design emphasis placed on safety, efficiency, sustainability and crew comfort.

The vessel accommodates up to 88 personnel and carries an advanced offshore access system, a helideck and two daughter craft, giving more than one route for transferring people to the turbines. That redundancy is the operational point of the class: on a site 195 kilometres offshore, a gangway that cannot be deployed in a given sea state stops work for the day unless there is an alternative transfer method aboard.

Distance is what makes accommodation tonnage necessary at Sofia rather than optional. Crew transfer from shore is not practical across that range on a daily cycle, so technicians live on the vessel for the duration of a shift rotation, and the charter runs for a term rather than campaign by campaign.

The start of the charter marks the point at which the third ship of the four-vessel programme moves from delivery into revenue service.