Island Boats Building Crewboats

Island Boats is located on a 6.5-acre site with 30,000 square feet of covered and enclosed shops as well as a 10,000 square foot paint shop along Bayou Teche in New Iberia, La.. With a strong reputation for catamarans and a wide variety of unique aluminum boats delivered from their yard, Island Boats is now building four crewboats. “These are our fist crewboats,” said company president Miles Thomas, “But we have built many different types of vessels from which we can draw design ideas. We are happy with our progress to date, and our progress todate should allow us to deliver the vessels on time.” The boats, a pair each, for two customers, include two 175 x 32 ft. vessels for Rigdon Marine and two 165 by 32-footers for Southern States. One of the two boats for Rigdon will be foreign flagged so has EU electrical circuitry while the second Rigdon boat will be U.S. flagged. Both vessels are built to ABS class +AMS, DP1. Propulsion for the first boat will be four Cummins KTA50 while the US flagged boat will have Tier 2 QSK50 engines. All engines are rated 1800 hp at 1900 rpm and turn Hamilton HM811 water jets through Reintjes gears with 2.54:1 reduction. Each boat will also have a pair of Cummins 6CTA8.3-powered 148 kW generators and a 30-inch Thrustmaster bow thruster powered by a third 6CTA8.3 engine. The two 165-ft. Southern States boats are being built to ABS Loadline only and will also be powered by Cummins QSK50 engines with the same 1800 hp rating. These two boats will have Twin Disc gears turning 50 x 50-in. propellers. The Southern States boats will have two Cummins 6CTA8.3-powered 99 kW generators. The boats will each have two hydraulic bow-thrusters powered by a PTO on the back of the two inboard engines. The Rigdon boats are scheduled to deliver in the second and third quarters of 2008. The Southern States boats are expected to deliver in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.