Page 38: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 1995)

Boomtown Belle Equipment

Main engines Caterpillar

Props Michigan Wheel

Gears Reintjes

Thrusters Schottel

M.S. Dixie II Equipment List

Naval Architect... Timothy Graul Marine Design

Sternwheel propulsion Caterpillar

Generator Caterpilla

Bowthruster Westerbeke Engine

Gear Twin Disc

Engine Mounts Lo-Rez

Propeller Shaft Coupler Lo-Re

Steering Skipper Hydraulics

Shifting (propulsion) Mather

Horn Kahlenberg

VHF/FM Icom

Depth sounder Datamarine

Radar Furuno

Yard.... USA Catamarans

Type .... Planing fast ferry

Name Harbor Bay Express II

Alameda

USA Catamarans introduced its line of high-performance planing aluminum catamarans, all of which are foil-assisted with the foils re- portedly carrying in excess of 50 percent of the total weight. The first vessel built was the 65-ft. (19.8-m)

Harbor Bay Express IIAlameda. The boat was delivered to the City of

Alameda, Calif., and is designed to shuttle passengers the seven miles between Alameda and San Fran- cisco. The Andromeda class cata- maran design boat is powered by

MAN engines driving France Heli- ces four-blade propellers through

ZF gears. The pilothouse features a full electronics package including:

Raytheon radar, GPS and VHF ra- dio; and Robertson autopilot.

Harbor Bay Express II Alameda

Equipment

Main engines MAN

Gears ZF

Prop France Helices

Radar Raytheon

Autopilot Robertso

Yard.... Bender Shipbuilding

Type.... Casino

Name .. Grand Victoria

Watch City Shipyard, Inc., a sub- sidiary of Bender Shipbuilding &

Repair of Mobile, Ala., delivered one of the nation's largest riverboat casinos in the Guido Perla-designed

M/V Grand Victoria. The boat is owned by Elgin Riverboat Resort, a joint venture between Hyatt Devel- opment Corp. and Nevada Landing

Hotel & Casino, and Bender com- pleted the 400-ft. by 114-ft. (122-m by 34.7-m) vessel under budget and ahead of schedule.

The vessel has 80,000 sq. ft. of total area (50,000 sq. ft. of casino space) and is styled to replicate a 19th Century Illinois sidewheel riverboat, the vessel was built at

Watch City Shipyard, a yard opened by Bender for the express purpose of building the Grand Victoria.

The boat is double-ended with two pilothouses. Six Z-drives, three at each end, provide propulsion and steering. Each Z-drive is connected to a 600-Volt, direct current motor capable of developing 400 hp. Elec- trical power is supplied by four

Caterpillar engine generator sets, rated for 1,440 kW at 1,800 rpm.

Yard.... Avondale

Type.... Casino

Name .. Boomtown Belle

Avondale's Boat Division is an- other beneficiary of the riverboat gaming vessel boom, and the yard has taken full advantage — deliver- ing a quality vessel in theBoomtown

Belle. The 19th Century-style paddlewheel boat measures 250 ft. (76 m) by 72 ft. (22 m) and offers a spacious 30,000-sq.-ft. of public area on casino decks. It has 1,211 gam- ing positions, including 84 slots and 362 table games. The boat was designed by Avondale's in-house engineering staff; the interiors of the boat were designed by St. Louis- based Directions In Design (DID).

The boat features a combination of propellers and paddlewheel for propulsion, and features Caterpil- lar engines, Michigan Wheel pro- pellers, Reintjes gears and Schottel thrusters.

Yard.... SkipperLiner

Type.... Cruise Vessel

Name .. M.S. Dixie II

The M.S. Dixie II is a 600-passenger cruise ex- cursion vessel designed as an authentic replica of a turn-of-the-century sternwheeler, and deliv- ered to Travel Systems Ltd., a

Zephyr Cove, Nev. company which owns and operates three vessels on

Lake Mead and is headed by former

NAPVO president Robert Kimball.

The outboard appearance, how- ever, is the vessel's only claim to the

Mark Twain era. The design and onboard systems are state of the art.

The vessel actually has two com- plete types of propulsion: one a func- tional hydraulic sternwheel and the second a twin screw systems. In essence, it has two types of propul- sion but three totally separate sources of propulsion: a safety fea- ture for the owner. Under the dual system, the vessel will achieve 14 knots.

Since the boat was built for op- eration on Lake Tahoe, Nev., a wa- ter delivery was not possible — so

SkipperLiner built the vessel in a manner that it could be transported overland to the lake. The process used was successful in the building of the M/V Desert Princess, a vessel built for Travel Systems in 1991 for operation on Lake Mead. The M.S.

Dixie II was shipped to Lake Tahoe in a total of six transports. 36 Maritime Reporter/Engineering News