Florida Marine Christens First Three of 25 New Boats - May 23, 2006
Florida Marine Transporters Inc., Mandeville, La., christened three of its history-making new builds May 23 in Houston. The 90- by 32-foot, 2,600 hp. towboats are the first of an unprecedented 25-boat run.
Eastern Shipbuilding Group is building the vessels at its Allanton Road shipyard in Panama City, Fla.
“I can’t recall there ever being that many boats built in a single string,” said industry veteran and marine surveyor Capt. Norman Antrainer. “It shows real confidence in the hull of the boat, doesn’t it?”
Antrainer of Covington, La., owner of Antrainer Marine Services, was part of the group that met several times a week with Florida Marine’s owner, Dennis Pasentine, to design the perfect boat for service on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Lower Mississippi River.
The others were naval architect Mike Hassett of Brymar Marine plus project manager Ned Couret and senior captain Jerry Jones, both with Florida Marine.
During the winter of 2004, when the group started thinking about the project, “there were a lot of factors in the market that pointed against doing it,” Couret said, the foremost being the cost and unpredictable availability of steel.
“As with most things, what seems to be a lost opportunity for some becomes an opportunity for others. Dennis had done a complete evaluation of what new boats had been built in the past 25 years in the inland towing business and it was apparent there was a huge lapse in time that any (significant) new equipment had been built.”
