Vessel Profile – Fishermens News

Arctic Fjord Makes American Boatbuilding History

New pollock-surimi catcher-processor departs Seattle for working life in the Bering Sea. The next time someone glibly states that “America just doesn’t make anything anymore,” you may want to shove this article in their face. The brand new, 99.3-meter (326-foot) Arctic Fjord factory trawler of Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group departed Puget Sound in October, bound for her inaugural working season after a harrowing five-year build-and-deliver saga through hurricane and pandemic challenges. The Rolls-Royce-designed vessel, dubbed a Rolls-Royce NVC 336 WP, is touted by the company as the largest fishing vessel ever built in the United States. She’s also the first American-built new vessel for the wild Alaska pollock catcher-processor fleet in over 30 years. Arctic Fjord was b...

Some Skippers Sticking with Fiberglass on Bristol Bay

Last year’s record-breaking catch on Bristol Bay resulted in plenty of orders for new boats, with skippers predictably searching for the latest ideas to boost speed, capacity or efficiency. This demand for highly customized designs is great news for the Pacific Northwest aluminum boat builders that can quickly adapt a hull to accept any type and sizes of engine, outdrive, waterjet, and the latest trend, the movable reel. So the latest flood of orders barely caused a ripple in the handful of remaining fiberglass shops, whose entire business model centers on one or two 32-foot molds that produce identical fairly narrow hulls with a single engine. This makes a fiberglass hull very much a “take it or leave it” proposition unless a builder was prepared to re-tool the whole operation with ...

Maybe Someday? A 319-Foot, Made-for-USA Trawler Concept

As I walked among exhibitors at the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle last winter, a 319-foot design rendering of a factory trawler at the Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) display caught my eye. Advertised as the ideal addition to the pollock fleet in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, the vessel concept was specifically meant to maximize ease of construction and affordability for U.S. shipyards. I later caught up with Jim Towers, EBDG‘s chief concept engineer, who designed the build, to get the inside scoop. Towers has been in the naval-architect-and-design industry for nearly 50 years and has worked with EBDG for around 16 years. According to Towers, the 319-foot factory-trawler design was put together some years back for a potential client. “It was basically an AFA (American Fisheries ...

Vessel Profile: The Turbo-Powered Triple Jet Gillnetter from Hades

“It’s a monster.” Cummins Inc. and Elliott Bay Design Group team up for a highliner-oriented Bristol Bay boat. Imagine you’re aboard grandpa’s fiberglass gillnetter on Bristol Bay for yet another (hopefully) gangbusters salmon season. Another gillnetter zooms past at 20 knots propelled by triple UltraJet 340HTs with a full load of fish in the hold. “I hear that thing can carry 20,000 pounds!” Grandpa says. No way, Gramps is spreading bar-side gossip again, you think. Such a scene is closer to reality than one might believe. A partnership between Cummins Inc’s Mike Fourtner—who in addition to being commercial marine sales manager of Cummins is a working Bristol Bay fisherman—and Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) have led to what is at the time of this writing officially...

Vessel Profile: North River Boats’ Sounder

A workboat by Oregon-based North River Boats ushers in a new Sounder family of vessels. North River Boats has built the new 26-foot survey vessel Sounder for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) of Los Angeles. The Sounder is the flagship for a larger series of customizable workboats at North River Boats, based in Roseburg, Ore., that can be scaled from 23 feet to 60 feet in length with beams ranging from 8 feet, 6 inches to 16 feet. For the company, the combination of the boat hull, trailer-able size, topline outfitting and electronic configuration puts the Sounder in play as the most versatile survey vessel of its size on the market. The vessel was on display at the 2022 International Workboat Show in New Orleans. Inception and Construction According to North River Boats’ ...

Vessel Profile: R/V Resilience

The Department of Energy anticipates its first hybrid-electric research vessel. The r/v Resilience, a hybrid electric research vessel being built by Seattle-based contractor Snow & Company, is expected to join the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory-Sequim (PNNL) fleet in April 2023. The PNNL is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, managed by the department’s Office of Science. The laboratory houses several scientific user facilities and research facilities. “They (PNNL) have a fleet of two boats right now and they wanted to expand with (the addition of) a larger vessel with more capabilities,” Snow & Company Project Manager and Estimator Chris Watson told Pacific Maritime. “Snow & Company is the builder, doing all the production engineering, and Inc...

Vessel Profile: The Western Flyer Returns

The Tacoma-built purse seiner of Steinbeck fame prepares for a new working life. The Western Flyer was in dire straits when it was found by John Gregg on the Swinomish Channel in 2015. The 1937-era wood purse seiner had endured two sinking episodes from 2012 to 2013 and appeared no different than the many doomed derelict workboats of the world. Yet Gregg, inspired, eagerly bought the Western Flyer for around $1 million. The reason? The Western Flyer is the same purse seiner John Steinbeck and his colleague and marine biologist Ed Ricketts chartered to the Gulf of Mexico in 1940. The expedition to collect and catalogue tidal marine animals is the subject Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize-winning book, The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Out of the Grave & Back to Work Gregg, who’s based in the...

Vessel Profile: ACI Boats Building Commercial Fishing Catamarans

American Samoa fishermen stand to benefit from four modern “Super Alia” vessels that evoke the region’s culturally significant alia sailing canoes. ACI Boats has been awarded a $3-million contract with the American Samoa Government’s (ASG) Department of Commerce for four “Super Alia” commercial fishing vessels. The four aluminum catamarans are to be constructed at the 20,000-square-foot ACI facility in Port Townsend, Wash. The name “Super Alia” evokes the maritime heritage of the iconic alia sailing canoes of the South Pacific. The boats are to be identical 38-foot by 14-foot semi-displacement catamarans, designed by ACI and Coastwise Marine Design. They’re set to be constructed with 5,086 aluminum hull skins with 5,052 aluminum interior transverse frames. Design features include ACI...

Coast Guard Cutter Cuttyhunk Decommissioned

One of the U.S. Coast Guard’s remaining 110-foot Island-class patrol vessels, the cutter Cuttyhunk, was decommissioned May 5 in a ceremony at Air Station Port Angeles in Washington. Cuttyhunk, one of 37 remaining such Island-class patrol boats in service, was the 22nd of 49 of the vessels built. A fleet of 154-foot Sentinel-class cutters will replace the Island-class vessels, according to the USCG. The Cuttyhunk was commissioned in 1988 to support various USCG operations, including search and rescue, drug and fisheries enforcement and maritime homeland security. During its 34-year tenure, the vessel’s crew has accomplished more than 1,000 operations ranging from responding to searches and rescues in the Pacific Northwest to helping in various submarine escorts. Commanding Officer and ...

USCG Cutter Alex Haley Returns to Kodiak After Bering Sea Patrol

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley is back in port in Kodiak, Alaska after a 35-day winter Bering Sea patrol during which it engaged in domestic fisheries enforcement, responded to search and rescue incidents and performed at-sea medical evacuations from the Bering Sea fishing fleet. The cutter returned March 29. During the patrol, five search and rescue cases resulted in crew members saving five lives, according to the USCG, including an individual who experienced chest pain at Akutan and a 20-month-old child at King Cove suffering from respiratory distress. The crew maintained a law enforcement presence throughout the Aleutian Islands chain to prevent the illegal harvesting of U.S. fish stocks. They conducted seven fisheries boardings, investigated reports of two fis...