Coppins awarded for US Navy sea anchor design

December 20th, 2012
[Press release]

For shoppers after a new bike or kayak at Coppins Outdoors store in Motueka, there is little to suggest that upstairs in the modest family business sea anchors are being designed and built for the US Navy.

This side of the Coppins business has just been recognised with an International Achievement Award from Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI), for design excellence in specialty fabrics applications, at the association's 2012 expo in Boston, Massachusetts.

The competition drew 355 entries from 14 countries, with W A Coppins taking the Award of Excellence in the Safety and Technical Products category for its Para Sea Anchor (PSA) ship steerage control project.

Company owner and designer Bill Coppins says their brief was to design, test and manufacture a Para Sea Anchor system for the US Navy.

"They wanted a sea anchor - basically an underwater parachute - that could be released electronically and would hold a container ship in position to allow emergency transfers to another vessel in heavy seas," he explains. "They needed a way to transfer freight at sea, to provide humanitarian aid or to project military power away from traditional ports."

The system had to hold the two vessels exactly seven metres apart for several hours while cargo is transferred by crane. For a small, family-owned company from a small South Island coastal town, it took a lot of confidence to tackle a project for the navy of the world's greatest super-power.

"But we realised we had knowledge and experience that no-one else had," Bill Coppins says. "We relied on four generations of industrial fabric knowledge and decades of experience in the fishing and yachting industries."

Mr Coppins said the sea anchor system had to work flawlessly every time, which took a very strong, light sea anchor, an electronic release system, a reliable deployment system, a robust fabric buoy to hold the anchor at the right depth under the surface in changing conditions, and a compact shell to hold and protect all components for easy handling and use.

"We had 12 months to design, draft and construct the 12-metre, 80-panel system," he says. "There were a number of challenges, including the complications of having to ship and test sea anchors half-way around the world."

Other challenges included design for a 200-ton loading, sourcing the strongest light-weight components, effective connections to ropes and shrouds, designing a deployment bag of limp fabric that would release without tangling, and a buoy shaped like a grader blade to drive into the sea and pull the PSA from the bag. The system was tested off the California coast, using a newly-launched 41,000 ton navy vessel, and worked perfectly.

Mr Coppins says the company is humbled and inspired by the respect shown to them by the US Navy, and by the international recognition the award has brought.

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