Kvichak Delivers Savannah Pilot Boat

Carving a horizontal white line between the summer-blue Olympic mountains and the summer-blue waters of Puget Sound, the sleek blue-hulled boat skimmed at 29 knots. The Carmac-designed Kvichak-built 78-footer turned and stopped in nearly its own length with her Hamilton 651 waterjets kicking up a spray of white to match the gleaming white of her house work. The twin heart-muscles of this hugely impressive vessel are a pair of Cummins KTA38 M2 diesels rated for 1350 HP each at 1900 RPM in a heavy duty rating turning into ZF2550 marine gears.

Built for the Savannnah Pilots, the powerful new vessels is named Georgia in honor of her home state. With a fuel capacity of 1250 US gallons the vessel has a 205-nautical mile range at the designed speed of 28 knots. In formal sea trials the vessel actually exceeded this by about a half knot. With an overall length of 78 feet 2 inches and a beam of 21 feet 5 inches, the all aluminum vessel has excellent sea keeping and amazing manoeuverability characteristics.

"After extensive investigation, the Camarc pilot boat was chosen to improve our existing fleet," said Capt. Browne of the Savannah Pilots, "Our new boat will operate in calm to turbulent seas and we felt this design best serves our needs in terms of safety, speed and outfitting."

Completed on scheduled in August 2004 the new boat is being delivered to the east coast in September by one of the semi-submersible vessels of the Dockwise yacht delivery service that operates on schedule between Vancouver BC and Florida. The Georgia is the seventh pilot boat Carmac, Kvichak and Derector Shipyards, of New York have partnered on to design and built for U.S. pilot associations. She joins a growing number of North American pilot vessels that are choosing the reliability of Cummins power.