The christening ceremony was performed by Mrs J van Vonno, wife of former Supervisory Director W van Vonno. The Stornes is an ocean-going vessel that will be used mainly in the oil and gas industry for precision protection of pipelines and cables down to a depth of 2,000 m. It is the third and – with a loading capacity of 27,000 tonnes – also the largest flexible fallpipe vessel in the Van Oord fleet. The Stornes was built at the CIMC Raffles yard in Yantai, China, where it was launched on 20 August 2010. The name of the new vessel, Stornes, is in keeping with the tradition of flexible fallpipe vessels in the Van Oord fleet (Tertnes, Nordnes). Nes is an ancient word for a peninsula in both Dutch and Norwegian. Stor is the Norwegian word for large. ‘Stornes’ therefore means ‘large peninsula’. The construction of the Stornes is part of Van Oord’s comprehensive investment programme for 2011-2015 period, amounting to almost EUR 1 billion.