by Joel Rubin
It’s Samantha Fewtrell’s accent that gives away her nation of origin. “Yes, I’m a Brit,” she admits but 25 years of her life were spent in Dubai, growing up with her family and entering the energy industry in 2010. Her employer was Seajacks, the leading developer of advanced jack-up vessels, which act as a stable base for the construction and servicing of offshore structures including wind turbines.
Seajacks merged with Copenhagen-based Cadeler, another leading vessel owner and operator, at the end of 2023. Samantha, as well as her husband, a native of Sri Lanka who remotely manages a real estate portfolio in the UAE, and their two daughters, ages 11 and 7, moved to Virginia Beach in 2022. She is now Cadeler’s General Manager of US Operations. “My priority in the US is supporting Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project (CVOW),” she says. Specifically her team oversees the construction of the Charybdis, a jack-up vessel that will install turbine towers, nacelles and blades for the windfarm 27 miles out in the Atlantic.
The Charybdis
“Every couple of months I go down to the Seatrium shipyard in Brownsville, Texas where they are building the Charybdis,” says Fewtrell. When completed, the 472-foot-long, 184-foot-wide vessel, which is owned by Dominion Energy Inc., will be the first of its kind built in the United States. It had to be to satisfy the federal Jones Act, which requires that ships that go from “US point to US point,” in this case the assembly yard at Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT), where it will be homeported, out to the windfarm foundations, must be US flagged and crewed. “We are tasked with ensuring it is built properly, delivered on time, has a qualified crew and gets the job done.”
Fewtrell is one of a growing number of foreign nationals who have come to Hampton Roads for positions in offshore wind. She has her girls at John B. Dye Elementary in Virginia Beach this year with the oldest moving on to Great Neck Middle next fall. “For all of us, it’s certainly a big change from Dubai, but we really like it here.”
Once the Charybdis arrives in Portsmouth next year, it will go to the CVOW site, plant its feet on the ocean floor and with a massive crane, lift 2,200 tons of equipment at a time. On each trip to and from PMT, it will ferry components for four turbines. And with 119 berths, it can sleep plenty of crew. Fewtrell praises Dominion Energy for how diligent it has been in orchestrating the 176 turbine CVOW project. “Building its own jack-up vessel and locking in costs on equipment early was smart. Dominion has been a fantastic partner.”
Samantha also praises Paige Fox at VB Economic Development for finding Cadeler office space at Gather, a large co-working suite in Town Center, and assisting with work visas. “We really enjoy collaborating with Samantha and other foreign nationals who have come to our city and region,” says Fox. “We hope they stay and grow here and attract other companies from Europe and elsewhere to join them.”
In the meantime, if you see Samantha walking about the Central Business District, say hi and welcome her to Virginia Beach. She’s helping bring us clean energy and a new industry that could define our region for decades to come.
