6 minute read
A Good Ribbing
from WorkBoat July 2019
by WorkBoat
A Good Ribbing
For RIB manufacturers, new models and new markets.
By Michael Crowley, Correspondent
Safe Boats 35 Multi-Mission Interceptor can carry 14 people in shock mitigating seats.
Safe Boats International
Safe Boats International introduced its 35 Multi-Mission Interceptor in 2016 and received its first orders in 2018 for both domestic and international government customers. The first 35 MMI was delivered this spring.
Since the normal sales cycle for an introductory boat model is 24 to 36 months, “we were about on track for the first sales of that boat,” said Rob Goley, the Bremerton, Wash.-based company’s director of business development.
The 35 MMI is similar to Safe’s 41 MMI except that the 41 footer carries up to four outboards, while the 35 MMI is limited to three outboards. It also has a traditional deep-V hull while the 41 MMI is built on a step-hull configuration.
The 35 MMI measures 35'×10' and is rated for 1,050 hp. It carries 19 people, 14 of those in shock-mitigating seats. How those seats can be arranged is one of the 35 footers’ selling points
(as it is with the 41'×12' 41 MMI). The deck is laid out with a track system that allows for various seating arrangements. “The track allows you to reconfigure the deck arrangement to meet specific mission requirements,” said Goley.
Safe Boats is working on some new models, which the company is not yet ready to disclose. A project the company is very willing to talk about is its new partnership with the Dutch boatbuilder Stormer Marine in Amsterdam, which specializes in aluminum workboats, as a way to compliment Safe’s lineup. The Stormer boats would probably be built in a Safe Boats facility in the U.S. Early models will probably focus on Stormer Marine’s Harbour Series and Porter Series.
“Within the year we will definitely have some Stormer workboats in the U.S.,” said Goley, and some of Safe’s lineup might be licensed through Stormer for the European market.
WILLARD
Willard Marine, Anaheim, Calif., has a contract to build 14 rescue boats that will be matched up with three 320'×70' Ollis-class ferries being built at the Eastern Shipbuilding Group in Panama City, Fla., for the New York City Department of Transportation’s Staten Island Ferry. There will be four RIBs on each ferry with launch and recovery davits and two to swap out for maintenance.
“We are about to finish the first batch of six boats,” said Cole Christensen, sales manager for Willard Marine. The first boats will be delivered in August and the final four in July 2020.
The RIBs for the ferries are Willard Marine’s 16'×6'10" Sea Force 490s, which carry a couple of distinctions. They are “the smallest rescue boat RIB in the U.S.,” said Christensen, and are also SOLAS approved.
The Sea Force 490s have fiberglass hulls, carry up to six people, and will be powered with a tiller controlled 25- hp outboard.
A recent contract awarded to Willard Marine is for a Sea Force 540 patrol boat tender that will be carried by an 80' patrol boat being built at All American Marine in Bellingham, Wash. The patrol boat is for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Law Enforcement Division, which will operate offshore and in the Gulf of Mexico.
The TPWD patrol boat will have a cradle in the transom that will launch and recover the 19'6"×8' Willard RIB while underway. The RIB will be powered with a 150-hp Steyr SE164E diesel connected to a Hamilton HJ213 waterjet. Together they should be able to kick the RIB up to 35 knots. “A small package that can accommodate that kind of a propulsion system is pretty one of a kind,” noted Christensen.
A Wing hybrid air and foam collar will protect the RIB in its comings and goings into and out of the cradle. The TDWP RIB is scheduled for an August delivery.
Christensen said, “There’s a lot of interest in this style of boat.” For example, Willard Marine is currently working with the Hawaii state police for a boat of the same size with a diesel-powered waterjet “so it can go over shallow reef areas without damaging any coral.”
RIBCRAFT
Portsmouth, N.H., Fire Department’s 21' Ribcraft 7.8 has a portable fire pump in the bow and enough space aft for rescue work.
Ribcraft
Ribcraft, Marblehead, Mass., was awarded a five-year contract in April for seven Ribcraft 11.0s (35'6"×11'6") for the Navy’s explosive ordnance disposal work. Divers and remote underwater vehicles will be deployed from the RIB “to defuse mines or any kind of explosive detonations,” said
Matthew Velluto, Ribcraft’s director of business development. A Cummins diesel with a Hamilton waterjet will provide the power. Ribcraft will also build a 7.0 (24'×8'8") RIB for the Navy.
Ribcraft has always built search and rescue RIBs but the newest wrinkle in the design is a rescue boat with firefighting capabilities. The challenge for designing a boat for these two missions has always been building a search and rescue RIB in the 19' to 30' range with firefighting ability, without losing the rescue capability due to the amount of space taken up by the fire pump. “You might have a fireboat but you don’t have a rescue boat anymore,” said Velluto.
Ribcraft’s way around that issue eliminates using a hose that’s run over the side of the boat for the fire pump’s intake. Instead the intake is hard plumbed through the hull with a through-hull fitting and a sea strainer, “so it can be self primed and ready to go as soon as they hook the pump up.”
The fire pump is a portable unit held in place by quick connects that are generally forward of the center console. “Receive a call for fire suppression, you put the pump in and hook it up quickly but the rest of the boat is set up for rescue,” said Velluto.
With the pump in the bow, the boat can be pointed wherever the fire is. “In the RIB market we are probably the only one doing it,” Velluto said.
INVENTECH
Inventech’s 36' Ecotour boat for a Maine operator will resemble this earlier tour boat with its drop-down bow door.
Inventech Marine Solutions
Inventech Marine Solutions, builder of Life Proof Boats, has designed and built a number of tour boats, including a pair of 40 footers in Hawaii and a 42' whale watching boat for Washington’s Puget Sound. In late May, the Bremerton, Wash., company began design work on a 36'×10' ecotour boat for a Maine operator that should be delivered in spring 2020.
The 36' RIB will have a pair of 300-hp Yamaha outboards. “We’ll be shooting for 22 passengers,” said Micah Bowers, the company’s CEO. A bow door will drop down, allowing passengers to disembark on a dock or an island.
A boat that Bowers said is “something new for us” doesn’t fall into the workboat category, but it does show what a RIB can accommodate when driven by a bit of imagination. It is a yacht tender whose owner had Inventech design a RIB that can accommodate a hot tub. It will be a 31'×10' RIB with a three-person hot tub. The water is kept hot with a pair of diesel boilers.
On the transom will be a pair of 200- hp Oxe diesel outboards. They are the first diesels to go on an Inventech boat and will be controlled with a SeaStar Solutions joystick system.
Bowers predicts that there will be a growing market for diesel outboards, “as long as they can keep the prices down. Now they are more than twice the price of a gas outboard of the same horsepower.”
While Inventech builds new RIBs that carry their fast collar design, either all foam, a foam-air hybrid or 100% air, a separate part of the company has been retrofitting new collars on older boats for almost four years. In May, RIBs from Zodiac, Rayglass Protector and Rendova were in for new collars. “We can retrofit any existing collared vessels,” said Bowers. “We won’t retrofit a boat that wasn’t designed to have a collar.”
In the past year Inventech has built six or seven boats as part of a five year GSA contract. “They are mostly for a police department, usually 23' or 27' boats.” Bowers said that Inventech plans on focusing even more on government and commercial sales in the future.
