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Bob Kehl News

24 Nov 2003

Vessels: Tall Stacks Draws 800,000 to Queen City

Every four years the excursion vessel segment of the commercial marine industry stages one of the largest festivals in the United States, yet except for the vessels that participate in it, little is known about this event. It overshadows the Workboat Show but receives little attention in the marine press. From an attendance standpoint, if this event were the World Series of Baseball, the Workboat Show would be T-ball for five-year olds. The event is called Tall Stacks and is held on the Ohio River every four year in Cincinnati, Ohio. The 2003 event was the fifth such Tall Stacks event and was attended by over 800,000 people during a five-day period in mid-October.

07 Aug 2003

Feature: Dutch Treat

For many years Houma Fabricators, Houma, La. built passenger boats, offshore boats and other steel hulled vessels much like a dozen other shipyards in the Gulf south. In the mid-90's they built several large gaming boats for Iowa entrepreneur Bob Kehl. If you hadn't stopped by Houma Fabricators for the past two years, today you would not recognize the place. Purchased by Shipyard De Hoop of the Netherlands in 2001, the shipyard has undergone an amazing transformation with an $8.6 million expansion. The Dutch shipyard is turning the 42-acre Houma site into a shipyard to resemble the company's main facility in Lobith, Netherlands. " So far we have added three steel preparation halls, four subassembly halls, new slipways with bulkheads and a permanent launching system," said O.M.