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Fiji 60:- 18 m [60'] economical 100 pax ferry

When resort owner and ferry operator Dick Smith wanted a second vessel for the services he operates between Fiji's Port Denarau, and the Plantation Island and Musket Cove resorts on Malolo Lailai Island, he decided to build it himself. He had purchased a female hull mould from New Zealand Company Catamaran Enterprises. This hull mould was originally designed by us and incorporated several parallel mid-body extensions to allow hulls from 14m through 16m to 18m to be produced from the same set of hull moulds. This mould had been used to produce the ferry boats for Hong Kong harbour and so had a proven pedigree.  Aside from the lower hull built in the mould, we designed the vessel largely for building in flat panel composite materials and Dick Smith mostly utilized Duflex end grain balsa panels. The boat has our usual round bilge, high prismatic, minimum wetted surface CS hull shape which gives total protection to the propellers and even allows the vessel to dry out on its own bottom if required. Because it needs to operate in fairly rough sea conditions, we used a very high wing deck clearance and incorporated an "antislam nacelle" up forward to minimise wing deck impact. Propulsion was by twin Caterpillar 3116TA diesels. These were derated to deliver 310hp each at 2,400rpm. These turned four bladed Henleys Tiger props via ZF IRM 280PL gearboxes with a 2.41:1 reduction. The result of this was a fully loaded top speed of 25.7knots. At 20 knots the boat is consuming 4.1 litres [just over 1 US gal] of fuel for every nautical mile covered. That this is a very efficient ferry boat design is evidenced by Dick Smith.  In his words, "It's great, even better than I expected. It's very economical. I have another cat on the same run and we built this one for less than that cost. 'Malolo Cat II' is twice its size, carries 50% more passengers and uses 40% less fuel".

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