Eighteen months after construction began, the Gowind offshore patrol vessel L’Adroit, an innovative maritime safety and security platform, has left DCNS’s Lorient shipyard, where it was built, on a course for France’s Toulon naval base, its home port. Built under a DCNS-funded programme, L’Adroit incorporates a number of major innovations. DCNS has made the vessel available to the French Navy for three years, and over the next few months it will have a chance to demonstrate its exceptional operational qualities on French Navy missions.
A symbol of DCNS’s ambition to win a larger share of the markets for small- and medium-displacement surface ships, the Gowind OPV L’Adroit put out from Lorient on Saturday 19 November on a course for Toulon, where it will arrive late next week.
“Its departure marks the end of the L’Adroit construction phase at Lorient,” said Marc Maynard, Gowind OPV L’Adroit programme manager. “In 18 months, the 100 people involved in the programme have successfully met the major industrial challenge of building this innovative vessel packed with state-of-the-art technologies. We are confident that the French Navy will demonstrate the vessel’s impressive capabilities, helping to promote Gowind in international markets as a needs-responsive range of naval vessels with real operational value.”
Over the next three years, the French Navy will thoroughly test the vessel, designed for current and emerging maritime safety & security missions, including fisheries surveillance, drug interdiction, environmental protection, humanitarian support and search & rescue at sea.
With two crews rotating every four months, L’Adroit will offer a high level of at-sea availability, spending 220 days a year on operational missions.
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