ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies, or MITAGS, has the perfect vessel simulator for a new company doing work in Maryland.
Skipjack Winds is a division of Orsted, an industry in offshore wind farms. Skipjack Winds is developing a wind farm 20 miles off the Maryland-Delaware cost.
MITAGS is a facility to train mariners from around the world.
In an IMAX-like theater, they can simulate more than 100 ports around the world and even scenarios like a wind farm that won't be fully in place until 2026.
There’s no need to wait years to train captains how to navigate a wind farm, they can get a head start.
“This is called a full mission ship simulators," said Catie Gianelloni, from MITAGS. "They are 360 degrees, and while they don't actually move, you still feel motion.”
They give you a warning about sea sickness and you soon find out they aren't kidding.
Brady Walker, with Skipjack Wind, said this wind farm will benefit Maryland in more ways than just clean energy.
“This is thousands of brand-new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars a brand new economic activity here," Walker said. "This is a brand-new American industry, it’s a brand-new industry for the state of Maryland.”
When traveling at sea, no two days are the same.
The lighting changes, the seas change and the weather changes.
They could simulate all that here as well.
“As close to the real thing as we can without playing that price of blood and oil," Gianelloni said.
With a simulator as versatile as this, it's well worth the $3,600 a day to train there.
If you did this exercise with a real ocean liner, it could cost upwards of a $100,000 a day to operate a ship.
“It's a tremendously valuable tool," Walker said. "As we work to make the experience of navigating a wind farm on a day-to-day basis accessible to a lot of people.”
“I mean you have the opportunity to explore what is possible and impossible without paying for it in Mariners lives or Mariners safety," Gianelloni said.
