Our Ferries a’
Buildin’
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| The first bulkhead going up
on the new Golden Gate ferry |
In another
installment of our ongoing coverage of the two new ferryboats
destined for San Francisco Bay currently under construction at
Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, Bay Crossings recently checked in
with Project Manager Happy (I kid you not) Richards.
Well, Happy, wow’s
it going with our new boats?
It’s going
swell. We’re building one boat for the Golden Gate Bridge
Authority, which is a 44-meter catamaran ferry and we’re also
building a 34-meter boat for the Alameda people down there.
So give us a
quick run down on the status of both them. Where do things stand?
Well, the Golden
Gate ferry that we’re building, it’s progressing quite nicely.
The superstructure on that boat is, I would have to say, about 75%
complete right now as far as the structure and we will be getting
outfitting here within the next month I anticipate.
What do you mean
by outfitting?
We’ll be
insulating and we’ll bring in the finish work people to start
dressing up the interiors. Hopefully we’ll be installing windows
in 6-8 weeks. The hulls are just getting started on that boat. We’re
build the hulls upside down. Then we flip them over. The flip date
for S-139, which is what we call the Golden Gate Ferry, is March
24th 2001.
And the Alameda
boat?
That one’s a
little farther down the road. We got the people here this week from
Australia. These are both International Catamaran Design ferryboats.
We’re finalizing all the details so that we can start construction
on that boat.
What will be
different, better, or distinctive about these new ferryboats?
The Golden Gate
boat is very similar to the Del Norte. The look is a bit
different. We incorporated the same loading and unloading setup that
they have there now. A lot of that’s the same too for the Alameda
ferry. We had to design the boats around their specific needs,
height off the water line say for the Alameda boat and the Golden
Gate boat for their ramp assembly to grab onto the boat is going to
be very similar, almost identical to the boat they have now.
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| Welder
Quinn Owner at work on the hull |
So when do you
find out what these boats are going to be named?
That’s not
usually something that the customer is able to do for us until maybe
two or three months before the vessel is launched. I’m not sure
what the process that Golden Gate has for naming their vessel but we
don’t have a name as of yet. I don’t know if they’re going to
have a contest or what down in the Bay Area to name that vessel.
How much are they
going to cost by the time you’re done?
The Alameda job
is about $4.3 million. The Golden Gate is about $8.4 million.
How long will it
take?
The Alameda boat
is to be delivered October 1 and the Golden Gate ferry is June 1.
The Golden Gate ferry then will have taken about 11 months to build
and the Alameda ferry about 8 months.
