In May, the crabber and shrimper Sea Princess arrived at Giddings Boatworks for the same reason that has driven previous vessel owners from California to Alaska to pull their boat off fishing grounds and steam to the Charleston, Ore., boatyard: improved sea keeping, greater fish hold capacity, and carry more deck gear. In a word, sponsoning.
Sponsoning is something that Giddings Boatworks is well-known for. “It seems like we do one or two a year,” said Ray Cox, Giddings Boatworks owner. The Sea Princess arrived at Giddings Boatworks from its homeport of Eureka, Calif., in May, measuring 71’ 5” x 20’; now she is 74’ 11 ½” x 28’. “We punched the fish hold out for more capacity, and she will carry more crab pots” on deck.
Most of the new length was gained by extending the bow, which also was given a bulbous bow, which should reduce some pitching and improve hull efficiency. “It does help the bow,” noted Cox.
At Giddings when it comes to designing a vessel’s sponsoning, no plans are drawn up, no lofting, and there’s no precutting of steel plate. It’s stick-built sponsoning that utilizes just batten sticks and tape measures. Batten sticks are used to form the sponson’s shape, and then the steel plating is cut by hand to match the shape given by the batten sticks. “No plans; just out of our heads,” says Cox.
The wheelhouse was not altered, but beneath it, the newly built whaleback runs out to the new side-shell plating. That’s created a much larger interior in the crew quarters, which is being rebuilt. Sponsoning the hull also resulted in a larger engine room that allowed the generators to be moved out to the sponsons. One of the generators is being rebuilt. “It’s now a lot bigger engine room,” said Cox.
The sponsoning work required much of the Sea Princess to be reframed with 3” x 4” angle iron; the hull given new ¼-inch plating and new watertight bulkheads.
Work on the vessel has also taken longer than expected. “This one ended up being a lot more work,” said Cox. “We were just going to make it wider, put sides on it and sponson it.” Then “we whalebacked it, gutted the engine room, redoing it, and expanding the fish hold. We weren’t supposed to do any of that.” The additional work pushed the arrival date for the next boat (a 58' crabber) to be sponsoned to April.
“We are trying to get the Sea Princess done by November 15,” said Cox.
