SHIP REPORT
Building better boats
All images courtesy of Dongara Marine.
DONGARA MARINE DELIVERS ITS LATEST CRAY BOAT TO GERALDTON FISHER, WITH FUEL-EFFICIENCY AND RELIABILITY AS ITS TWO MAIN DRIVERS.
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ongara Marine’s 22.4m fuel-efficient cray boat Force of Nature was successfully delivered to its Geraldton-based owner, Dave Perham, in April 2020, and marks the dawn of the new norm, says the shipbuilder: an increase in size and fuel efficiency. With naval architecture by Southerly Designs, its twelfth collaboration with Dongara Marine in the past five years, the monohull lobster boat is an upgrade from Perham’s current vessel, 17.1m Conquest 55 Natural Selection, built by Sea Chrome Marine in 1994. Combining an aluminium hull and a composite superstructure, the pilot boat new build is proven to have much
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lower fuel consumption than comparable vessels, and the live tank capacity is increased to 84 lobster baskets from the previous 64. “When Natural Selection was built it was pretty much the average size cray boat, perhaps slightly above average if anything”, says Dongara Marine’s Managing Director, Rohan Warr. “In the 1990s only a handful of new boats, maybe one in every 20, were over 20m. Now that’s the average size for new Australian high-speed lobster boats, and in fact it’s more like 23m for the Western Australian fishery. So, while Force of Nature is quite a bit bigger than its predecessor it’s not overly large by recent standards. That makes a substantial difference in terms of affordability.”
All hands on deck
Dongara Marine is responsible for Force of Nature’s design, construction and delivery. This includes the boat’s pronounced flare at the bow, a large deadrise angle forward, twin
SPECS Name Builder Year Hull Superstructure Length Beam
Force of Nature Dongara Marine 2020 Aluminium Composite 22.4m 6.1m
large skegs and twin pintle rudders. But with Dongara Marine currently working at full capacity, with three newbuilds and a major refit already underway at its Port Denison facilities, the hull structure was instead fabricated at a boatbuilder in Geraldton. Once trucked back to Port Denison, the outfitting and installation of mechanical, hydraulic and electrical systems was carried out by the Dongara Marine team. As a leading manufacturer of resin-infused
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