Page 43: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2, 2010)

June 2010 www.marinelink.com 43 here?” and the answer was, “It all de- pends on the market for Jones Act ships.

We are constantly looking for new busi- ness.” Among new business leads that

NASSCO is pursuing is MARAD’S Ma- rine Highway Program with research un- dertaken by a full-time Manager of

Government Relations resulting in the re- cent publication of an impressive volume entitled, “A Shipbuilder’s Assessment of

America’s Marine Highways.”

BAE, Ship Repair in San Diego and in San Francisco

Another major defense contractor,

BAE, operates ship-repair yards in San

Diego and San Francisco, as well as in

Hawaii. We talked with Bob Kilpatrick, general manager of the San Diego Yard, whose first comment was, “We have a lot of work going on, with a payroll of as many as 1600 people!” and explained, “Our San Diego yard, in conjunction with the three other nearby master ship-repair contractors for the US Navy …

NASSCO, Northrop-Grumman, and

Continental Maritime … is engaged in major modernization programs for the

US Navy’s cruisers, destroyers, and

LSD-41 class ships.” The program for cruisers, currently underway, comprises a six-month mechanical modernization program, followed an electronic overhaul in a second six-month period.

Kilpartick noted that, “In June, we will be starting a modernization program for the USS John Paul Jones, as the begin- ning of the Navy’s destroyer moderniza- tion program.”. The program for destroyers is huge, involving over 50 ships built some 20 years ago and bring- ing them up to the standard of brand-new ships with an additional 20 years of ac- tive duty. BAE’s San Diego yard, along with the other ship-repair contractors in the area, is also providing “post-shake- down services” for an ongoing stream of new Navy ships, which adds up to a very busy ship-repair load.

At the venerable BAE San Francisco

Drydock, the focal point is the 900x150- ft floating drydock, the largest on the US

West Coast, and the only one capable of servicing many of the cruise ships call- ing at the Port of San Francisco. The yard has a second floating drydock, measuring 528x90-ft. These two dry- docks are the only ones on the bay capa- ble of cleaning the hulls of many of the old ships from the US Maritime Admin- istration’s (MARAD) Reserve Fleet, prior to their being towed to yards in

Texas for scrapping. BAE is definitely not prepared or equipped to scrap these ships at its yards in environmentally-con- scious California, but it does power-wash them, clean the hulls of invasive species, and inspect them, prior to their being towed to Texas. As of May 1st, the yard has cleaned six of the more than 50

MARAD ships in the Reserve Fleet.

Among recent ships repaired at BAE’s

San Francisco Drydock are Coast Guard cutters, cruise ships, barges, a Matson container ship, and the hospital ship,

USNS Mercy. The yard employs some 300 workers.

Bay Ship & Yacht, the Other

Shipyard on the Bay

The only other shipyard of note on San

Francisco Bay is Bay Ship & Yacht in

Alameda, which provides repair and maintenance services for the diversified array of workboats on the bay including the growing fleet of ferries and excursion boats. The yard has developed an ex- pertise in aluminum metalworking and believes that it could build the Bay Area’s

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