(Business in Cameroon) - After a set of endurance trials carried out between 21 November and 3 December 2016 in the Mediterranean Sea, with the participation of Rear Admiral Jean Mendoua, Chief of staff of the Cameroonian Navy; the State of Cameroon has given its approval to receive a new patrol boat christened Dipikar, reveals the specialised website meretmarine.com.

This patrol boat, which should reinforce the surveillance actions of the national Navy along the Cameroonian coast, we learned, is actually a vessel formerly known as Grèbe, and retired from the French Navy in 2010. Bought by Cameroon, it was fully renovated by Sofema, a French company specialised in the sale and maintenance of land, air and naval army equipment.

Commissioned for the first time in 1991, Dipikar, we learned, “is 52 metres long and 9.8 metres wide. With a load displacement superior to 400 tons, this patrol boat has a steel hull and an aluminium superstructure which can reach 18 knots and go beyond 4,500 miles at economical speed. It has a crew of about twenty sailors”.

Dipikar is the 2^nd large patrol boat purchased these past years by the Cameroonian army, after the Rio del Rey, which helps in securing the coasts and oil operations, particularly in the Bakassi zone, previously the subject of a border dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria.

BRM