The 102-foot catamaran bounced over the 6-foot North Sea waves, getting closer and closer to the speck on the horizon.

As the boat drew closer, the speck took shape, slowly becoming a vertical line, then a massive wind turbine - just over six miles out in the ocean, towering 20 stories above the choppy surface.

And it wasn't moving, wasn't bobbing in the waves, wasn't swaying. It was solid, as if it were sunk into the seabed - not floating in about 650 feet of water.

"It's just amazing to see - see how still it is?" said Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine. "Having come here today, seen the structure, reinforces even further that we've made the right decision to come here. We have a wonderful opportunity to leapfrog forward."

Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro's turbine, the 2.3-megawatt Hywind, is the only one of its kind in the world: an offshore, deep- water, power-generating wind turbine.

Maine officials hope that they might see a similar test turbine in the Gulf of Maine in the next five years.

On Friday, the last day of a Maine trade mission, Dagher and Gov. John Baldacci signed a letter of intent with StatoilHydro, which built the turbine, to have the company and UMaine work together on research and development to determine whether a similar project might work in the Gulf of Maine.

"If we can start out slow and sure and do it thoroughly, it will move along expeditiously," Baldacci said.

If StatoilHydro and UMaine decide to continue after completing an initial feasibility study, there could be similar test turbines miles off the Maine coast, in state or federal waters, in the 2012- 2014 time frame, said Sjur Bratland, asset manager for Hywind, the $70 million deep-water turbine demonstration project.

If they prove successful - and numerous other market, regulatory and other conditions are met - a full offshore wind farm could be seen in the Gulf of Maine by 2016, with additional farms by 2020.

There are other offshore turbines, but they are in shallow water, anchored into the seabed. This one is tethered to three anchors that keep it in place. The tower shaft is about 525 feet long, with about 200 feet rising above the surface and the rest below, weighted with seawater and rocks for ballast that provides the needed stability.

StatoilHydro is exploring the deep-water technology because it has no shallow waters off Norway. As in Maine, the coastal waters get deep, fast. And the wind farther offshore is more constant, and stronger -a better quality for power generation.

But the floating technology was largely considered unfeasible not long ago.

"They didn't believe in us two, three years ago," Bratland said.

Representatives from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins' office were in Norway with the governor's group.