Page 74: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2016)

VESSELS

Historic PT Boat to Return to Lake Pontchartrain

The National WWII Museum an- nounced plans to return restored patrol- torpedo (PT) boat PT-305 to her home waters of Lake Pontchartrain, where she was originally tested by Higgins Indus- tries more than 70 years ago.

The Museum launched the ? rst phase of the plan this morning: a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds necessary to move PT-305 to the water, test her for passenger use and, for the ? rst time, of- fer civilians the chance to take a ride on a fully restored combat-veteran PT boat – the fastest U.S. naval ship in World

War II.

The Kickstarter campaign, which has a crowdfunding goal of $100,000, is part of an overall effort to raise more than $500,000 to return PT-305 to the water- ways.

After funding is secured, the Museum plans to place PT-305 on a trailer, remove the entire front wall of her current home, the John E. Kushner Restoration Pavil- ion, and move the boat out to the Race

Street Wharf where she will be placed on a barge on the Mississippi River.

A tug will then pull the vessel to a fa- cility on the Industrial Canal for sea tri- als.

Following two to three months of test- ing, plans call for moving PT-305 to a new, permanent home – a custom-built boathouse located at South Shore Harbor long effort to restore her, over $3.3 mil- over 200 volunteers. There, PT-305 will tack Axis supply ships and troop trans- near the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. lion worth of in-kind and monetary do- become a unique Museum experience: ports, speeding over the waves just as

The transfer of PT-305 to water is the nations, as well as more than 100,000 placing visitors on the very deck where PT-305’s crew did in the Mediterranean culmination of the Museum’s decade- hours of work from a dedicated corps of members of the U.S. Navy stood to at- during the war.

Kleven to Build Trawler for Spanish Owner

Kleven signed a contract with Spanish ship-owner Pesquera Ancora S.L.U on the building of a 80m long stern trawler. The vessel is of NVC 374 WP design from Rolls-Royce, and is to be delivered in February 2018. This will be the fourth vessel of the same Rolls-Royce design in Myklebust Verft’s or- der book; two vessels are ordered by DFFU in Germany, one by CDP Saint-

Malo & Euronor in France, and this latest by Pesquera Ancora in Spain. In addition, the order book holds two live ? sh carriers for Norwegian owned

Sølvtrans, a trawler for Gitte Henning in Denmark, and an offshore construc- tion vessel for Volstad, based in Ålesund, Norway. The stern trawler will be ICE 1A* classed, and operational ef? ciency, low emissions and comfort and safety for the crew have been important criterias in the development of the vessel design.

Image: Rolls-Royce (Photo: The National WWII Museum) 74 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • APRIL 2016

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