Tim Jemison of Jemison Marine Inc. will pull off a boatbuilding “hat trick” next month as the Bayou La Batre, Ala., builder completes a third newbuild scalloper/bottom trawler for Warren Alexander of Atlantic Shellfish in Cape May, N.J.
Back in 2009, Alexander had Jemison convert the hull of an old 93’x25’x12’ shrimp boat to a scallop boat. Alexander had purchased the repossessed shrimper from a bank for the conversion. “That boat worked out so well we came back to Tim in 2020 and signed a contract with him to build two new fishing boats – the F/V Ocean Queen and F/V Ocean Pride – and then I came back for a third,” says Alexander.
Alexander had Farrell & Norton Naval Architects of Newcastle, Maine, design the steel hull commercial fishing combination vessels. All three boats are sister ships and identical in all aspects, says Alexander. The Ocean Queen was completed in 2022 and the Ocean Pride in 2023. The boats work out of Fairhaven, Mass. on the Acushnet River, where Alexander owns two commercial waterfront properties.
The new Nissa Kay is built identical to the other two vessels and is named after Alexander’s “significant other,” he says. “Tim has one of the best shipyards in the country and I know because I’ve been doing this a longtime,” says Alexander, 72, who started in the commercial fishing business at the age of 13 hauling clam bags for fishermen on the docks of Cape May.
All three steel hull boats are 88’x27’ and each one is powered by a Cummins diesel QSK38-series V12 cylinder, 38-liter displacement engine rated at 800 hp. Each also has a 6090 John Deere engine to run hydraulics and two 4045 65kw John Deere gensets to run the electric.
The naval architects designed the boats to incorporate dry and refrigerated sea water (RSW) tank fish hold systems to rapidly chill catches to near-freezing seawater temperatures, preserving freshness and quality until offloading or further processing. The boats will be able to drag for scallops as well as fish for herring, and keep the catches separated in the RSW tanks.
Jemison says the Nissa Kay is his last newbuild order “right now.” The yard, however, has plenty of repair work with a waiting list of shrimp boats, a longliner (headed to Trinidad), a dinner cruiser and a barge at the yard for maintenance.
