The second of a three boat order of fast, low-wake ferries, Reliance has to carry its passengers quickly, safely, comfortably and with minimal wash. A Teknicraft Designs hydrofoil assisted catamaran ferry was chosen by Kitsap Transit of Seattle, Washington, for a complex role.
Operating in a very environmentally sensitive area of a very environmentally sensitive American state these ferries had to comply with several very rigid constraints. They have ticked all the boxes required of them.
Kitsap Transit appointed an independent consulting company to determine if a vessel could be designed and put into service that would provide a solution to the problem. Following the consultant's evaluation of a number of different candidates over a period of time, Teknicraft was selected as the design having the best potential to design a suitable vessel.
Teknicraft had a busy 2019, and expects 2020 to be even busier. During 2019 the company designed and launched a number of very different vessels, including high speed commuter ferries and tourist boats, medium-speed tourist boats for a Seattle company, the high speed transfer vessel for White Island Tours, a barge, a patrol boat for the Gulf of Mexico, a research /survey vessel for Duke University, amongst others.
"Our planet is under threat from greenhouse gas emissions," Teknicraft's Nic de Waal told Baird Maritime. "The change-over from fossil-fuelled engines to electric machines has already happened in the automotive industry, and there is no turning back. The commercial marine fleet of the world will inevitably follow.
"Already many hybrid and electric-only propulsion vessels have been designed and launched, including a 600-passenger vessel Teknicraft designed for the Red and White Fleet of San Francisco. However, the technology of energy sources and propulsion components is ever improving and will soon enable us to design not only displacement speed vessels, but also high-speed vessels using electrical propulsion. This will invigorate the passenger vessel industry in the foreseeable future."