Around the Yards
Northeast

Paper core lightens tuna boat

It’s been a while in the making, but this spring, a lot of people could be talking about the Emme, a Northern Bay 38 tuna boat, when she is hauled from the boatshop at Otis Enterprises Marine in Searsport, Maine, and slides into Penobscot Bay.

Plenty of new lobster boats are launched into Penobscot Bay, but not many tuna boats. There won’t be any mistaking the Emme for a lobster boat, not with the 45-foot-long green stick punching skyward from the back of the extended cabin. Plus, the two 21-foot outriggers, a bandit reel on the stern starboard quarter and holders for 13 rods around the wash rail aren’t part of the fishing gear of any lobster boat.

There’s a lot of attention to detail on the Emme. From the powder-coated mast holding radar, lights and a KVH TracVision M3 satellite antenna, among other things, to the stainless steel extendable davit on top of the house.

The boat was built for Anthony Siniscalchi, out of Atlantic Beach, N.Y. Besides tuna fishing, Siniscalchi has a lobstering permit, so the davit, with its hauling block, can be pulled out to guide pot warp to the hauler, or pushed in when tuna fishing. When a large tuna is caught, a line will be run through the door on the transom’s starboard side, then forward and over the davit’s block and down to the hauler on the main bulkhead. With the hauler engaged, the tuna will be pulled through the door and onto the deck.

When tuna aren’t biting, Siniscalchi can watch a 20-inch TV monitor that folds down from the main cabin’s overhead. Up in the fo’c’sle, there’s a 19-inch monitor so the crew won’t miss out on their favorite programs. But the eye stopper when you enter the cabin isn’t the TV, it’s the nicely appointed paneling with radiused surfaces.

The convex corners in the cabin and forepeak are formed using cored panels made of honeycombed phenolic-resin-impregnated Kraft paper between thin facing surfaces of okoume plywood. It’s a product manufactured by Tricel Honeycomb. Most cored panels cannot be bent; these can. Keith Otis says it’s the first time his shop has used the Tricel product, and he’s not aware of other Maine boatshops using it.

Since the core structure is paper and 95 percent open space, there’s a tremendous amount of weight savings.

“Using Tricel, we are getting rid of 1,500 pounds over using plywood and glass,” Otis says. “And if it gets wet, it will dry out in a matter of days,” says Travis Otis, Keith’s son and the one who’s done most of the work on the boat. He adds that they tried to use the Tricel product wherever possible.

Travis acknowledges that while the Tricel panels are a third the weight of plywood, they are three times as expensive. But, he adds, “you won’t be using as much fuel, and over time, you’ll get it back and possibly more.”

With the weight savings, the boat’s builders hope the Emme gets up to 30 mph. To do that, she has a 670-hp Cummins QSM11 and a ZF marine gear with a 1.75:1 ratio that spins a 28" x 32" four-bladed prop.


Article originally published in National Fisherman, May 2007