17 December 8, 1997

Frozen At Sea

Steiner Shipyard in Bayou La Batra Alabama recently delivered the fourth in a series of six shrimp boats for French Guiana. While hundreds of Cummins-powered shrimp boats have been produced by Alabama yards over the years, these 80X24X11.5-foot boats carry some dramatic design advances for catch quality and enhanced crew safety.

The on board processing and freezing that is accommodated on the main deck level of the new generation of vessel will be gaining attention of fishing interests around the world wanting to maximize return on a finite resource. The boat's compact processing and freezing system allows shrimp to be dumped from the trawl onto the large after deck where they are put into 80-pound baskets. These are quickly taken from the deck into the 17'X8'3" processing room. The room, located along the port side of the 19-foot wide main deckhouse, is insulated with eight inches of blown foam over which fibreglass has been laid to meet French processing standards. In this space, which is kept cooled to about 60 degrees fahrenheit, the product is sorted on a stainless steel table and put into three sizes of consumer ready packages that are individually weighed on roll compensating electronic scales. From the processing room, that will normally accommodate three workers, the product is placed in plastic trays and loaded into 7.5X9-foot freezer room located forward of the processing room.

Once frozen the packaged shrimp is lowered through a 3.5X2.5-foot trap door into the 3400-cu.ft. hold for storage. The hold, which is also insulted with eight inches of foam, is kept at about 20 degrees fahrenheit. Once in port the frozen product is off loaded through a relatively small 5X5-foot deck hatch for transport directly to markets in France.

The main house provides accommodation for a crew of four with a captain's area just aft of the wheelhouse. The captain's cabin is equipped with curtains that can be opened to maintain an unobstructed view aft over the working deck when fishing. In a departure from traditional Gulf Coast shrimp boat design that has the wheelhouse forward on the main deck level, Steiner has raised it to the aft of the main deck house. Designated the "Observer" style, the design provides excellent visibility and safety when fishing gear is being worked on deck. At the same time by moving the wheelhouse closer to the a midship location, it is made much more comfortable when driving into heavy weather. Wheelhouse windows set 33 feet back from the bow are much less prone to being knocked out by big seas.

In another design innovation, access to the engine room with its six-cylinder Cummins KTA19-M main engine is through a bolted tonnage style door frame. This, together with a space at the main deck level, permits swap out of engines with out any modification to the cabin structure. The space over the engineroom is utilized for the blanketed exhaust muffler which then exits up to the starboard side of the centre line to maintain the unobstructed view aft from the wheelhouse.

Built to Bureau Veritas and French food processing quality standards, the boats are registered in Cayenne, French Guiana. Their owners, an American/French consortium, have selected the time-proven KTA19-M Cummins Marine engines for rugged dependability when fishing extended periods out of isolated ports.

For Further information contact:

Wanda S. Duke
Steiner Shipyard, Inc.
P.O.Box 742
13751 Woodruff Ave.
Bayou La Batre, Alabama, U.S.A.36509
Phone: 334 824-4143 Fax: 334 824-4884

Larry Neff
V-P Marine Marketing
Cummins Alabama Inc.
3422 Georgia Pacific Ave.
Mobile, Alabama
Phone: 334 452-6426 Fax: 334 473-6657

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