Another McCall Innovation

When Seacor Marine LLC became involved with the McCall crewboat fleet they very wisely kept the McCall family participation in the design and building of new vessels. Symbolic of the practice has been the tradition of including McCall in the name of all the fleet’s new crewboats. A few years ago the Colin B. McCall was named in honour of Colin Black whose many innovations in Cummins diesel technology were appreciated by Norman McCall and his son Joe.

On December 5, 2006 at a naming ceremony for Seacor’s latest crewboat, Norman McCall once again demonstrated his love of innovation not only in the vessel, but even in the Christening ceremony. Standing on the bow of the 190-ft. crew boat just above the bold black lettering that spelled out what we had been told was his granddaughter’s name, Joan G. McCall, he explained that he had to confess to bringing the participants together with a falsehood. “I don’t have a granddaughter named Joan,” he chuckled before going on to show how easy it was to carry out a change of genders. On his signal one of the crew reached over the bulwarks to remove the “A” from Joan and replace it with an H officially naming the 9,000 hp vessel the M/V John G. McCall to the obvious delight of John Gellert, senior vice-president with Seacor responsible for domestic and international divisions of Offshore Marine Services. With John at the ceremony in Houma Louisiana was his equally proud father Michael Gellert who is a director on the Seacor board.

Built at Gulf Craft this is the first DP2 capable fast crew/support vessel to be delivered. The John G. McCall is powered by five Cummins Mid-South supplied 1800 hp Cummins KTA50 engines.