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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 12
August 2008
Bolger offers fuel-efficient vessel design
GLOUCESTER, MA – Deepening groundfish regulations followed by escalating fuel prices have set Gloucester’s noted boat designer team, Phil Bolger and Susanne Altenburger, on a pro bono crusade to at least retain what’s left of small-boat fishing businesses and working waterfronts with a politically and wallet-friendly new “green” fishing vessel design.
“We can’t save the world, but this is our way as boat designers for 55 years to help the fishing fleet, home ports, and communities to survive,” the 80-year-old Bolger explained.
Although they find themselves walking in the same shoes that Jim Knott Sr., Jug and Cy Cousens, and Robert Crowe Sr. did back in the 1960s and ’70s to get lobstermen to use new products – plastic-coated wire mesh traps, fiberglass composite lobster boats, and hydraulic pot haulers respectively – Bolger and Altenburger are making progress with getting fishermen to consider their design.
Bolger is a college-educated Gloucester native, as well as a textbook- and hands-on-trained first-generation boat designer. He remembered the day in 1994 when the German-born Altenburger, also college educated, traveled from Boston and asked if she could be his apprentice.
“Boy, did I see talent then, and I was right,” Bolger said.
Since that day, the two have married and designed 50 boats together under the name Phil Bolger & Friends Inc. Boat Designers in Gloucester.
“Susanne and I do everything together,” including taking a daily walk often along the Gloucester waterfront they truly love, Bolger said.
Bolger has the distinction of designing or co-designing 670 boat types – both unconventional and conservative – from dinghies to lobster boats and draggers to even a 100'-plus research vessel and a 1794 warship replica. He also has authored six books and over 600 articles.
Bolger and Altenburger are now offering fishermen a design for a shallow draft fishing vessel made from a plywood-foam-epoxy composite.
The boat “will push through the water easily and will allow fishermen to get by with one-third of the horsepower and burn about 60% less fuel,” said Altenburger.
The husband and wife based this design on a small passage maker, which they described as “a very seaworthy powerboat with modest horsepower that has the range to run under power for very long distances, including crossing the Atlantic, with minimal fuel burned.”
“We branched out from that design,” Bolger said.
He and Altenburger even recently went out on the Gloucester gillnetter Gillian Anne to see what deck layout would work best in their design.
Renewable materials
Besides burning less fuel and emitting less pollution, their design is also “green,” meaning environmentally friendly, because the primary structure material for this boat is renewable wood.
“The vessel is based on sustainable materials that are American-sourced, and we can grow more of it,” said Altenburger.
Added Bolger, “The foam core plywood boats beat other hull materials for stiffness, unsinkability, and cost. The hull is also quiet. The owner can repair it and it’s insulated.”
Altenburger pointed out another advantage.
“The cost of plywood hasn’t doubled or tripled like aluminum and steel have in the last 10 years,” she said.
Build it yourself
They estimate the cost of labor and materials for a 70' green fishing vessel, which can carry 30,000 pounds of catch below deck, to be about $1,200 per foot.
Fishermen can either build their own boats or have boat builders do it.
“Anyone can do this,” said Bolger.
“You build your own kit first. Pre-cut everything and then assemble it. This allows a perfect match to each given fishing permit,” Altenburger explained.
Fuel savings
Their design seems ideal for already bottom-friendly small-to-medium sized lobster boats, gillnetters, and longliners that don’t use horsepower to catch fish and shellfish.
There are many 30'-60' gillnetters and hook boats in the groundfish fleet that contribute, when the rules allow them, high-quality, day-boat fish to their fishing community economies. But, even these vessels were built when fuel prices were close to $1 a gallon and often don’t get very good fuel mileage at sea.
With today’s $4-plus per gallon fuel prices, “People are starting to listen to us,” said Bolger.
Incentives?
Several dozen fishermen, including Billy Skrobacz from Gloucester, have already endorsed the new vessel.
“It might not be the most romantic design, but it’s economical as hell,” said Skrobacz, owner/captain of the 31' gillnetter Toots.
William G. Brown IV, who also endorsed the design, said he would be even more inclined to go down the “green” fishing vessel route if the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) added a special incentive for doing so, such as allowing boats built to the design specifications access to a closed fishing area.
Prototypes
In 2004, NMFS offered a research and development permit for a vessel made from Bolger and Altenburger’s design. With no takers then, that two-year permit has run out, but it can be renewed.
“We are in the process of seeking state and federal money to fund two or three prototypes in different sizes to find out how good or bad our ideas might be,” Altenburger said. “We will then campaign the proven prototypes up and down the coast. We expect our green friends to be in full support of this greening of the fleet.”
Bolger and Altenburger received an official endorsement in writing from the Conservation Law Foundation on March 31 and were seeking other such endorsements.
Meanwhile, two Gloucester brothers, one who works construction and the other a veteran fisherman with permits, are using one of Bolger and Altenburger’s green designs to build a 31' outboard-powered fishing vessel with a planing hull.
“Susanne and I see that the future for Gloucester and many other fishing communities doesn’t look good unless we go to this direction,” said Bolger. “We hope that other designers and builders will join us in this effort.”
For more information, write to Bolger and Altenburger at: Phil Bolger & Friends Inc. Boat Designers, 66 Atlantic Street, Gloucester, MA 01930-1627. You can also fax them at (978) 282-1349.
Peter K. Prybot
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