Estonia-based Baltic Workboats is building a 56-foot, ice-capable vessel for a customer on an island in the U.S. Northeast that will operate the craft in a workboat capacity. Delivery of the boat is expected in early summer of 2024.
“The customer has to come and go from the island in all sorts of weather conditions and they came to the conclusion that a pilot boat would be the best platform to the need,” said Carl Mahler, head of sales for Baltic Workboats US.
The boat on order is identical in all aspects to the Shipeku, an aluminum-hulled pilot boat delivered earlier this year to the Montreal, Canada-based Laurentian Pilotage Authority (LPA).
The design concept for the vessel was based on that of another wave-piercing pilot boat that Baltic Workboats delivered to Poland at the end of 2020.
The self-righting Shipeku features a patented wave-piercing hull, which helps the boat to readily navigate through ice fields, while also delivering improved maneuverability and seakeeping characteristics.
The hull is built on ice frames and reinforcements that enable it to work in ice up to six inches in thickness.
When the bow becomes submerged in rough sea conditions, the top surface of the bow creates increased downforce, which compensates for the buoyancy of the bow – a feature that reduces pitching motions and provides a smoother, quieter ride with less vibration at all speeds.
Equipped with a system that uses the waste heat from the engines to heat sea chests instead of the standard keel coolers used on other boats, the boat also has firefighting capabilities and two-man overboard systems, including a davit on the port side and a hydraulic rescue platform installed on the vessel’s stern.
Space is provided for one coxswain and six passengers.
Shipeku has a range of about 300 nautical miles and is equipped with twin Volvo Penta D-13 IMO Tier 3 engines with 700 hp each, that can push the boat to a cruising speed of 25 and a maximum speed of 32 knots. The engines drive fixed-pitch propellers via ZF gearboxes.
Shipeku also features a system utilizing accelerometers that controls and monitors its main engines and auxiliary systems and sub-systems via programmable logic controllers (PLCs) which feed to a single touch screen in the wheelhouse.
Data accumulated by the PLCs is stored and compared from one trip to another to measure and compare the boat’s functions.