Page 34: of Marine News Magazine (April 2019)

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BOATBUILDING

What’s in Your Workboat ?

Moose Boats rises to the challenge of building its biggest vessel ever. That’s an important step forward for this growing California shipyard. Equally impressive is what’s inside that rapidly developing hull and why those features were chosen.

By Joseph Keefe he U.S. boatbuilding scene is a changing landscape of sition to builder larger 75-foot catamarans (and beyond) waterfront manufacturing that constantly evolves to a simple and obvious shift for Moose Boats. Mark Stott,

T meet the inevitable peaks and valleys of demand. No- Moose Vice President and Sales Engineer, told Marine- where is that reality more apparent than at California-based News in March, “Our greatest innovations stem from solv-

Moose Boats. In October 2016, Lind Marine announced ing the speci? c needs of a client or collaboratively bringing the acquisition of Moose Boats. That move was important a solution the client devised to reality.” because Lind Marine operated a 5-acre shipyard including With larger craft, such as the new catamaran Moose a 430 foot dry-dock and 1,600 feet of linear pier on Mare Boats is currently building for Westar Marine Services, the

Island in Vallejo, CA. With the ink still wet on the contract, yard was able to leverage its internal design principles in a

Moose was ready to evolve into another phase of its growth. more spacious realm, with greater possibilities. The core

Moose Boats was founded in 2000 by Roger Fleck and, philosophy of Moose Boats has always encompassed terms in a very short period of time, has delivered an impressive such as “form, function, practicality, seaworthiness, crew total of about 100 military, law enforcement and ? re rescue safety, stability, serviceability and maneuverability.” If so, vessels. Moose Boat’s relocation into a larger production then their biggest boat to date will provide all of that, and facility at Mare Island allowed the business to scale its pro- more, when it ? nally slips into the water in Q3 2019. duction line to meet demand for larger aluminum vessels and offer a wider range of designs. The catamaran Moose ‘Checking’ all the Boxes

Boats is currently building for Westar Marine Services in

Westar Marine Services sought out Moose Boats with

San Francisco – 75 feet LOA and 130,000 pounds of full basic criteria that called for crew boats to ferry personnel displacement – is a perfect example of that evolution.

and ship’s stores to various destinations around San Fran-

Nearly two decades of building smaller catamarans of cisco Bay. This demanded a hull capable of transporting up to 46 feet, 40,000 pounds full load displacement with 28 passengers and 20,000 pounds of palletized cargo with semi-custom fabrication, and the need to support all of the an integrated cargo crane. Westar’s existing crew boats are systems and amenities of much larger craft, made the tran- steel mono-hull designs with deck level pilothouses, sub-

Credit: IMTRA

Credit: IMTRA

April 2019 34 MN