Page 27: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 2004)

Passenger Vessel Report weather warms, returning to New Orleans near the end of the year.

Perhaps responding to competition from the New

Orleans-based cruise lines, the American Queen will adopt three and four day roundtrip Mississippi

River cruises from New Orleans on a year around basis in 2004, leaving the other river systems to the other two vessels. Bottom line; don't look for any

U.S. flagged overnight riverboats to be delivered in 2004.

Dinner Boats

Other segments of passenger vessel industry are doing well, based on recent comments by leading naval architects. Andy Lebet, VP of DeJong &

Lebet, Jacksonville, Fla., says there is "lots of inter- est" in dinner boats, especially those serving the luxury, charter segment of the market. "We typically design and engineer three- to four vessels of this type yearly." Lebet said. Many of the passenger vessels his company designs are

Subchapter K vessels, allowing for more passen- gers than the Subchapter T vessels, limited to 149 people plus crew.

Among the vessels engineered by DeJong &

Lebet in 2003 include two luxury 400-passenger yachts, the Atlantica and the Majestic. "Both of these vessels work the charter trade, the Alantica in

New York and the Majestic on the West Coast,"

Lebet reported. (A complete report on the Majestic is contained in the January issue of MR's sister pub- lication Marine News.).

In 2004, the firm has more of the same kind of work including another 120-ft. by 33-ft. Sir

Winston for Capt. Winston Knauss. Knauss typi- cally builds a luxury dinner boat every two years or so and uses the latest ones in his own charter boat operation and sells the older ones. Keith Marine,

Palatka, Fla., builds these vessels.

Freeport Shipbuilding, Freeport, Fla., builds a lot of the vessels DeJong & Lebet designs. At this time they are building a 120-ft. dinner boat for an undis- closed customer and they are also lengthening the 65-ft. Black Eyed Susan, a hydraulically powered paddlewheeler by 24 ft. "The story on this vessel is a familiar one, Lebet said. "The owner needed a vessel capable of hold- ing 149 people and he was turning down charters due to his passenger capacity constraints," Lebet

RIGHT: The first vessel to travel across Lake

Michigan will begin serv- ice in May 2004. The

Lake Express will carry 253 passengers and 43 vehicles across

Lake Michigan at 34 knots. (Artists render- ing by Austal USA)

The excursion boat Quicksilver was the first vessel launched from Island Boats' new facility on Bayou Teche. The 55-ft. vessel takes divers on reef tours in Hawaii. (Photo by Island Boats) ,k " . sSSiif "Now with leak detection" urnm w ri » 1

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