NEWBUILDS
NEW FRASERBURGH PAIR TEAM It’s almost forty years since Macduff Shipyards last built a dedicated pair trawler team, but have this year handed over a pair of identical new trawlers to their Fraserburgh owners who operate exclusively as a pair
8 Identical trawlers Faithful and Crystal River are the first dedicated pair team to be built at Macduff Shipyards for more than 30 years
When Solitaire and Sonia Jane were completed at Macduff in the 1980s, there was still a demand for wooden hulls for this class of vessel, but now owners Stewart Buchan and David Cardno have taken delivery of steel-hulled new trawlers that have been built with the same design and hull form as Good Hope FR-891, which Macduff delivered in 2019. Aiming for delivery dates as close together as possible for Stewart Buchan’s Faithful FR-129 and David Cardno’s Crystal River FR-178, Macduff shipyards split the construction of the two 26.50 metre by 7.80 metre breadth trawlers between its facilities. Faithful has been built in the Macduff main fabrication hall and Crystal River in the Buckie hall. To assist with the build schedule, many of the steel units for Crystal River were also built in Macduff before being shipped by sea to Buckie for assembly. With every industry sector affected by the pandemic, shipbuilding has been no exception, particularly coping with delays that put delivery of the two new trawlers a couple of months apart. Fruitful was delivered this summer, joined by Crystal River to make its first landing in September. “The pandemic has delayed the building schedule for both vessels and subsequently made delivery at the same time challenging. However, the yard managed to delivery both vessels within three months and would like to sincerely thank both Stewart and David for their patience,” a spokesman for the yard said. There is a great deal of Macduff input throughout the two identical trawlers, from the deck equipment to the catch handling systems, and partner company Macduff Ship Design also played a central role in these builds. The chosen hull form was developed using CFD technology, assisted by the Wolfson Unit in Southampton, to optimise the design to reduce resistance and fuel consumption, while also allowing for a 1150 box fishroom capacity. Macduff Ship Design faired
28 | OCTOBER 2021
the design lines, analysed the stability, draughted a full set of structural plans and produced a computer ‘kit’ of steel parts required to build the hull. The kit was nested, and CNC machine profiled by another company within the group, Macduff Profilers, with the Lloyds Grade A shipbuilding plate parts delivered to the fabrication halls for assembly. As usual, the wheelhouse and masts were built from marine grade aluminium to minimise weight. The yard designed and installed a tailor-made hydraulic deck machinery package, so Faithful and Crystal River each have a large triple barrel winch powered by a Hagglunds CA210 drive, a pair split net drums, a bagging net drum, one small gear handling winch, a codend winch and a dedicated anchor windlass. Thistle Marine supplied both the MFB8 landing crane and MBK13 powerblock crane, both mounted on a slew ring base. 8 Faithful FR-129 was delivered to Stewart Buchan in the summer
For the latest news and analysis go to www.worldfishing.net/news101
