I want to talk about fast crew supply vessels because recently there's been increased interest
in these vessels. They are commercial vessels and they are being converted as yacht support vessels
and stand-alone expedition yachts and in particular DAMEN has been doing a brilliant job
in promoting these sort of wedge-shaped fast crew supply vessels and they've been building these for
about 20 years but they brought one to the Fort Lauderdale boat show a couple years ago and it
created a big stir and everybody got all excited this one here is in a little video being offered
for 13.9 million dollars converted and there it is. It has a big crane it's got some toys. It has
very little going on up here because it is wedge-shaped. It's called the axe bow and I did
videos on these. It doesn't really have the gross tonnage or the capacity that you would expect
in a hull this length and that's because they're going for speed. They were originally built to get
the crews out to the rigs fast. Time is money to the operators of these vessels and so they put a
lot of power in them. They're capable of going 25 to 30 knots, so this is what they look like
in the work boat configuration. Again you see the first third or a little bit more of the hull is
up there in the v shape. It's got a nice aft deck so they're actually quite well suited
for conversion. As is often the case the Europeans and the Americans are building the same boats
for the same purpose to service the offshore oil industry. So these are the fast supply boats.This
is an example that's probably a 180 footer I'm not sure it could be 200 and these are the boats that
are built down in Louisiana and there are probably a couple of hundred of these that have been built
and maybe about a hundred of the Damens and I'm not sure of those numbers but i think that's about
right over and this is over the last 20 years. If you went to Apollo Duck which we all do from time
to time check out what sort of strange equipment is for sale - you see more and more of these fast
crew supply boats. Oh yeah here's a 179 - most of them are dynamic positioning DP2 $4.2 million,
but that one for instance is built in Vietnam and it's in Africa so I'm not sure that's a great deal
Here's another one here built in Brazil - five and a half million you gotta go to Brazil.
Here's a usa one. There's some nice jeeps down her. I've been aboard the Damen boats and I
followed the sales and the pricing on these fast crew supply boats as they get converted and it
has certainly captured my interest> One thing I've never done is go down to Louisiana where these are
all made and where they operate from into the Gulf of Mexico. They're also operated in Mexico Brazil
Africa and Southeast Asia. These are really well engineered, well-built, rugged offshore vessels
and it was high time to go check it out and that's what I did and that's what I want to report on
here. So if you go down to Louisiana this is what it looks like. A lot of places are still
beat up by the hurricane and other places are looking pretty good. The maritime industry in
Louisiana is enormous with approximately 50 000 people employed in building, crewing, managing,
and operating ships globally from Louisiana. Within the overall maritime sector the fast crew
supply vessels are built by specialized shipyards that tend to be family owned. These are modest
size facilities and they have been building these for over 30 years. Most of them these vessels were
originally built as crew-only boats and they were probably only up to 150 feet. Over time, the oil
companies needed vessels that could also carry piping and mud and extra fuel and extra water
to the offshore rigs that were now as much as 200 miles offshore. And so the vessels became larger
,more robust. The new generation was now carrying 80 to 100 passengers. They were carrying heavy
loads of drill pipes. They were carrying drill water, fuel for the rig and on top of that they
all had to have dynamic positioning DP2 and they were subject to increased class regulations and
US Coast Guard regulations. Another key factor is that all of these shipyards were competing head-on
against each other to get these big contracts from the oil companies so they were very competitive,
very economical and efficient builders. What is immediately apparent here in Louisiana
is that supply has outpaced demand and thus the opportunity. So let's dive in here and have a
look at some of these boats. This is a 184 foot fast crew supply vessel built in 2012 by Breaux
Brothers for the Chouest organization. They crew it and they operate it. It's currently laid up.
These boats have a beam of 30 to 36 feet. They've got a high load-bearing large open half deck. So
on a conversion, this gives you over a hundred feet by up to 30 feet of buildable space for new
accommodations and to house your toys, tenders and still have plenty of room for a helipad.
This is a no-nonsense bridge with great visibility. It's got all the DP controls and all
of the state-of-the-art radios and controls that you would expect in a sophisticated commercial
vessel. The aft facing controls and helm station is vitally important - remembering that they back
up to a rig and they have to have crane operations and crew getting on and off. The other thing
I want to note is that when these vessels are laid up all the manuals, all the handheld radios
every little bit of equipment that you need to go back to sea is still there ready to be reactivated
and put back to work. The interior finish is not bad at all. They've got strong AC, the engines
are all the way aft in the hull so they don't have vibration and noise from the engines. The exhaust
and the intakes are also all the way aft more than 100 feet away. This vessel has a crew cabin
on the main deck that might be for actually taking somebody off a rig that needs care.
It's got some facilities on board for showers. It's got a small serving galley up there and a
place for snacks. In a conversion i could see this area being repurposed as a main salon with
bigger windows looking forward or it could even be an owner's suite. It was built by Beaux Brothers
and they are one of the most renowned builders of fast crew supply vessels that have been doing it
for over 40 years. This crew area can be easily converted over for yacht crew accommodations . I
want to point out one of the great things about doing these conversions is we're only dealing with
the front 25 percent of this hull so far and we're gonna keep all that because it's useful
for our mission and now the rest of this space is available for us to build out for accommodations,
for toys and tenders, for the helipad. Let's check it out. I'm used to inspecting steel
hulls and so the first impression I have is that the metal is not coated and there's no rust and
it looks new. On some of the vessels that I inspected this midsection here was all tanks
and these were water tanks for the rigs or mud tanks and they were so large you could actually
cut right into them and make other crew cabins or you could make a gym or or walk-in freezers
and stores. So each boat is unique in the way that it has its equipment tankage and systems laid out.
But what they all have in common is that you'll see that the piping and the
all the electrical runs and the systems are completely accessible, very well labeled,
easy to maintain, easy to operate. This is powered by 3516B Caterpillars that deliver 2
000 horsepower each. All these boats either have triples or quadruples and they either go to
52-inch props or Hamilton jet drives. My immediate thought was - too much horsepower, too much fuel
burn - this doesn't make any sense. But then I saw the charts of the actual fuel burns on these boats
and if you go 12 knots you're only burning about 50 gallons an hour and that's probably better than
a Viking sportfish. SWIFTSHIPS very kindly gave me a tour of two of their vessels - a 200 foot
fast crew supply vessel and a partially finished 175 foot vessel. Behind me here you can see the
deck house, the bridge, on the 175 footer which is about 60 percent built and you see how they have
the forward canted windscreen on the bridge deck and the main accommodation block underneath it.
What we're going to do on these conversions is - we're going to take that bridge deck and
move it further aft but we'll keep this accommodation block. So on a conversion
we use this high load-bearing deck immediately aft of the deck house to add our accommodation block.
Normally six guest cabins back here. The advantage here is you don't have the crew space filled out
with all the seating here. You've got your open overheads and
you could go ahead and put in a galley here; you could put in an owner's suite;
you could have dining and then going aft here you go right into your main salon
if that's how you want to lay it out. I don't know if there are any snakes or alligators in here.
okay here we are in what would be the crew quarters and it is ready for
conversion so this basically puts you a year ahead versus a new build. You're also benefiting
from old aluminum prices. This is new aluminum, but sold at old aluminum rates.
On both sides of me here are what i was talking about before - large tanks here and then also
aft of this next space are more aluminum tanks. That panel and the installation is valuable.
That's all we have time for today but keep your eye on this sector of the maritime industry
because i believe we're going to see some really interesting conversions shaping up on these hulls.