New London ― The massive UHL Fierce cargo ship arrived Tuesday morning at Adm. Harold E. Shear State Pier with the first shipment of blades and gear boxes known as nacelles to be assembled here starting later this month as part of the South Fork Wind project .

Ulysses Hammond, interim executive director of the Connecticut Port Authority, said the offloading process would start Wednesday morning, conducted by 20 to 30 mostly local longshoremen. He expected the Portugal-registered, nearly 500-foot heavy load carrier that seemed to dwarf every other ship in the harbor to be fully offloaded within six days, and the first turbine assembly would start later this month.

“It is truly hard to describe what this moment means to our project, to southeastern Connecticut and our nation,” Hammond said in a phone interview Tuesday.

He called the arrival of some of the most critical components in the wind turbine assembly process a “tremendous milestone” in the nation’s attempt to “advance the fight against climate change.” He noted that State Pier will play a critical role in the construction of offshore wind farms that will be an “immediate benefit” to Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, helping to create new jobs, drive local investment and advance the state and nation closer to clean energy goals.

Hammond said the blades and nacelles manufactured by the Danish firm Siemens Gamesa are destined for Ørsted and Eversource Energy’s South Fork Wind project, being constructed 35 miles east of Montauk Point. The business is technically still a partnership, though Eversource is in the process of selling its interest.

The project, expected to power 70,000 homes in Long Island, N.Y., is currently on schedule, Hammond said.

“We ... have not experienced delays for components, except there is an electrical panel board that will not arrive until November that was ordered in the spring of this year,” he said in an email. “It will not delay anything due to Siemen's work-around of using on-site generators to power up the nacelles until the panel board arrives.”

The UHL Fierce, which came to New London via Germany and Denmark, is operated by United Heavy Lift. Its cargo included the massive wind turbine blades that are each as long as a football field and, at 656 feet in diameter, twice as wide.

Once installed, the 11-megawatt turbines will measure nearly 800 feet tall, five times taller than the Gold Star Memorial Bridge and 200 feet taller than the Travelers Tower in Hartford, said Justin May, an Ørsted spokesman, in emailed responses to questions.

In June, the first wind components were offloaded from the Claude A. Desgagnes cargo ship; since then, several other ships have arrived at State Pier with wind components, including 200-ton tower sections that now sit at the pier waiting for the assembly process to begin. One more shipment of tower sections is expected this month, and in the fall there will be two more shipments of nacelles and blades, May said.

Last week, South Fork Wind announced the completion of 13 foundations to support the project’s offshore wind substation and 12 wind turbines. The foundations were transported by an offshore installation vessel called Boskalis's Bokalift 2.

“Meanwhile, work continues on connecting the wind farm's export cable and array cables to the offshore substation, and installing advanced foundation components,” according to a South Fork Wind press release. “A fleet of American vessels at the project site ... including construction and transport barges, tugboats, crew vessels, and protected special observer monitoring vessels, continue to support South Fork Wind's construction.”

Workers involved in the project’s ongoing work include vessel and crane operators, boat captains and crew, engineers, welders, scientists and protected species observers, according to the release.

New York local union members involved in the work include a number of ironworkers, pile drivers, divers, operating engineers, electricians, laborers, and members of the region's building trades.

The installation of South Fork Wind turbine generators is expected to start later this summer and run through the fall.

“Ørsted and Eversource's South Fork Wind remains on-track to become America's first utility-scale offshore wind farm to be completed in federal waters when it begins full operations by the end of this year,” the release said.

l.howard@theday.com