Boatbuilding: Finlander II

By Paul Molyneaux

hen Tim Rider, owner of New England Fishmongers, bought a 47-foot dragger and decided to turn it into a jig boat for ground sh and a winter/spring scalloper, he had a permit to get to ground sh in otherwise restricted areas.

Built by LeBlanc Brothers in Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, and launched as the Richard J., the Finlander II has now been through a massive overhaul that increased the vessel’s e ciency. Only the exempted shing permit program Rider was relying on has since been scrapped. He says he needs a regulatory environment supportive of a business model he believes is in the vanguard of sustainability.

“We bought the boat in 2017 and went sh dragging with it,” says Rider. “Then we took all the dragging gear o and put the jigging machines on and started scalloping. The boat needed a lot, and we did really well on the ground sh last fall and on the scallops this winter, so we said, ‘OK, this is the year.’”

That was back in 2021. On May 18 that year, the dragger arrived in Southwest Harbor, Maine, battered from years of shing and full of remnants and problems from incomplete gear shifts. For Rider and his crew, it was time to turn the boat into an e cient machine for their needs.

Starting from the keel, the plan included hull repair, propeller repair, engine rebuild, hydraulics overhaul, and a new electronics system. In addition, Rider wanted to clean up the deck layout and replace the berglass over plywood

With mast and rigging off, the New England Fishmongers crew started tearing apart the plywood and berglass wheelhouse.

New England Fishmongers photos

wheelhouse that had extensive rot, as well as re-rig the mast and boom.

“We’re shooting for an August 1st relaunch,” he said that day in May. But a rainy summer and pandemic supply chain issues would wreak havoc on Rider’s timeline.

Rider’s business model is heavy on the retail side, and he left his scalloping captain, Asher Molyneaux (this writer’s son, in full disclosure) to oversee the project while he went back to Kittery, Maine, to put together a sh market and restaurant that would hopefully keep the money coming in. Juggling many balls, Rider would get back to Southwest Harbor for a few days every few weeks.

At age 19, it was a big bite for Molyneaux, but the rst part was relatively easy: the tear down. With the 20-year-old Novi-built boat, a LeBlanc 47, blocked up in the Hinckley yard, Molyneaux and various helpers started with taking o the rudder and propeller, which they shipped o to AccuTech Marine Propeller in Dover, N.H.

“They cleaned it up and cut it down,” says Molyneaux. “They cut an inch o , so it went from 51 inches, now it’s a 50 x 36.” That was one of the simpler operations in rehabbing an old boat that had been tinkered with for years.

Moving forward, the team left the 4-inch stainless shaft in place, as well the Twin Disc 3.5:1 gear. “We sent the engine, a Cat 3406E, to Dennis Welding and Marine on Beals Island [Maine],” says Molyneaux. “They totally rebuilt it, new sleeves and all that.”

“I made a couple trips down there,” says Scott Smorch, a mechanic at Dennis Welding. “Got her all unhooked and slid her back from under the bulkhead, then it just took a morning to get her out.” With the engine in the shop, Smorch started the rebuild. “It was a full rebuild. We put a remanufactured head on it, pistons, piston packs, liners, bearings, oil coolers. Everything. The block was completely torn down and Magna uxed, looking for cracks along with the crank and everything,” says Smorch.

As a Cat dealer, Dennis Welding was

After cleaning out a 20-year-old nest of old wires, Robert Kramp of Kramp Electronics rewired the Finlander II from the batteries to the masthead light.

The Cat comes back; the 3406E had its rst complete rebuild — torn down to the block — after more than 27,000 hours of service. able to get all the parts needed, and the project should have been nished quickly.

“The rebuild only took two or three weeks,” says Smorch. “The problem we ran into was the machine shop. Their crank grinding machine was down, and they were waiting for parts.” The supply chain issues stemming from the global pandemic led to a lengthy delay in getting the crank back in the engine, just one of the problems that lengthened the Finlander II’s stay in the yard.

With the engine in the shop, Molyneaux and Rider started to take apart rigging and the hydraulics.

“It was a direct-drive system that was supposed to pumping all the time,” says Molyneaux of the hydraulics. “But somewhere along the way, some hoses got changed so the hydraulic uid wasn’t able to get to the keel coolers.” Molyneaux took ve Pullmaster winches o the boom and wheelhouse, along with several control blocks. “It was a great system, but over-engineered for what we’re doing.”

“We had to reverse engineer it,” says Chris Baldwin of PCR Industrial in Bangor, Maine. Baldwin made numerous trips to the boat as well as phone consultations to help Molyneaux understand what the boat had, and how to recon gure it into a system that worked for scalloping and jig shing.

The Finlander II had extensive rot in the wheelhouse, a haphazard electronics system and layout, and a rat’s nest of wiring. Rider decided to tear the entire thing o and create a smoother-functioning wheelhouse.

In between rainy days, Molyneaux worked with Larry Young, a berglass mechanic out of Jonesport, Maine. Together with other helpers, they cut away the old cabin top and used the pieces for patterns for a Coosa board replacement, a lightweight synthetic that would not rot.

“We coated that with berglass inside and out,” says Molyneaux. “Then put in all new windows, except for one.”

In spite of delays, the pieces came together.

First, the Cat came back.

“We got the engine back in on September 1st,” says Molyneaux. “We’ve got all new wiring, and switches. Looks great, everything labeled, so you know what it is. Robert Kramp of Kramp Electronics rewired the entire boat from the batteries up, and set up all the electronics,” says Molyneaux.

“What’s new is the multifunction Furuno display, the Navnet TZT12F, that gives current, tide, water temp, and can show as a plotter, bottom machine, and radar. We’ve had a TimeZero program on an Acer computer connected to a GPS,”

The Finlander II’s new simpli ed hydraulic system drives the old Eaton-powered winch, as well as two Pullmaster PL5 winches.

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Tim Rider gets ready for jigging groundfish with the Finlander II, the only problem is getting access to productive fishing grounds.

says the 19-year-old skipper. “I just didn’t know how to use it. I learned how to look at the options menu and found the 3D mode, and also depth shading.”

Other new items include a Furuno 911 series autopilot and Furuno radar.

“Besides that, we have the old stuff, a Garmin 1040XS plotter that has a lot of Tim’s marks in it, a Furuno GP32 GPS, and an older Koden radar. We’ve got two VHFs, an Icom and a Standard Horizon.”

By late October, Molyneaux was going flat out with whatever help he could find to finish the boat and get back fishing.

“We put on white oak sheathing to protect the hull from the towing wire,” he than ever, Molyneaux took his mother and girlfriend aboard the Finlander II for the ride back to Portsmouth, N.H.

“The engine runs more efficiently,” he says. “It was pretty gunked up in there. We’re definitely going to save fuel, and it runs a lot smoother.”

Unfortunately, the dense concentrations of pollock in the relatively shallow water of Fippennies Ledge are no longer accessible.

“We were fishing out there on an EFP [exempted fishing permit],” says Rider. “But they cut that program, and it hurt. We really needed those groundfish after spending money on the boat and the new shop.”

There were several hook boats in the program, and according to Allison Ferreira, public affairs officer at NOAA’s office in Gloucester, Mass., the EFP granted to Rider was part of a research project to develop electronic monitoring as a tool to meet sector monitoring requirements.

“The EFP ended when electronic monitoring was approved for broader use in the fishery,” says Ferreira. “Permanent access to the groundfish closed areas, would require regulatory action from the New England Fishery Management Council.”

After spending most of November and early December searching for fish, Rider went back to running the larger New England Fishmongers enterprise and sent Molyneaux back after scallops. “Right now, the boat’s supplying all the scallops we need,” says Rider. “So that’s pretty nice. We’re about to start selling a scallop roll.”

Small-scale operations like Rider’s have gotten a boost during the pandemic, which strains longer supply chains. And that boost has generated investment in vessel upgrades and shoreside infrastructure. Whether the regulatory environment will be conducive to the long-term viability of sustainable business models like Rider’s and others remains to be seen.

says. “We filled in all the gouges and holes with hull and deck putty and then painted her with this stuff,” he says, holding up a quart of Epifanes mono-urethane, high gloss yacht paint. “Eighty dollars a quart.”

After clearing away modifications the previous owner had made to the deck layout — stations and various apparatus for fish handling — the New England Fishmongers team put down a new deck of Tuff Coat, a rubber-like material that gets painted on.

They hooked up the old winch, 1000 Series Eaton that gets the job done, and lifted the mast and rigging back on.

On Nov. 9, with the boat looking better

Paul Molyneaux is the Boats & Gear editor for National Fisherman.

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The F/V Highlander hits the water with twin Hi500 water jets ready to get the vessel to the grounds in reasonable time, and get up on plane when returning with sh.

By Paul Molyneaux

self-described “Arkansas redneck” with a high school diploma has designed some of the most sought-after water jets in the Bristol Bay salmon shery.

Americans seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for underdogs, the unlikely success stories like that of Len Hill, who, with his son Jason, owns Hill Innovations, manufacturer of some of the most popular high-thrust water jets in the Bristol Bay gillnet eet.

“I don’t have any formal education that says I can do what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years,” says Hill. But somehow, he gured out how to design top-performing water jets like the company’s 20-inch Hi502, the 24-inch powerhouse Hi600, and the new 17-inch, Hi400 for twin applications.

“Right now, we can sell a lot more than we can build,” he says, speaking from the company’s new facility in Alexander, Ark. “My son Jason has got 12 Hi400s sold, and four

For Len Hill, math and engineering came easy. Learning to fly single- seat jets in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War opened doors for him that led to the marine water jet business.

Hi502s. And we’re trying to get them built and delivered on time.”

At age 79, Hill is constructing a new building and buying the machinery he needs to grow his business. “Right now we have some new markets we’re looking at, but we can’t pull the trigger on that,” he says. “We’re just trying to keep the fishermen in Alaska happy.”

Hill got into water jets after working for the Jacuzzi family, and he met them because he learned how to fly in the Marine Corps.

“I grew up on a 360-acre farm not far from here,” he says. “I wanted to be a farmer, but I ended up going to Arkansas Tech on football and track scholarship. The math came easily to me, so I was taking analytical geometry and calculus and all that, then one day in 1966, I went to the Union, and a Marine recruiter was there. The picture of the F4 fighter jet caught my eye and he said, ‘You want to fly one of those? Sign right here.’”

Hill went on to learn to fly the Douglas A4 Skyhawk, but stayed on the ground in Vietnam, coordinating airstrikes and medevacs. Out of the military, he started flying for a charter company, mostly hauling class A and B

Len Hill sacrificed some speed on the high end in favor of more thrust, the Hi500 with its lower speed impeller and big nozzle is designed to get Bristol Bay boat up on plane when loaded with salmon.

When Elliott Bay Design Group and Silverback Marine spec’d the UltraJet 340 HTs for their new triplejet Bristol Bay boat, it took Jim Campbell back.

Most commercial fishing boats in the Bristol Bay market run twin jets, but Campbell, the president of the Americas for UltraJet maker Marine Jet Power, said F/V Smoky Point blasting with UltraJet. his company’s entrance into the bay was in 1997, when MJP outfitted the F/V Eternity with a triple jet system.

“The Eternity originally had three of our 303 Waterjets. They upgraded to our 305 HT jets three or four years ago,” Campbell recalled.

Since that first incursion nearly a quarter a century ago, MJP has gained strong traction among gillnetters in both the Bristol Bay and Copper River fisheries. Campbell said the HT series was developed specifically with commercial fishing in mind and allows for boats to get up on plane with a heavy load of fish onboard.

“We developed the high-thrust version of our jets, the 305 HT and the 340 HT, specifically for the commercial fishing industry. What we’ve done is we’ve given up a little bit of the top end speed for more low- and mid-range thrust, and that thrust peaks where the boats are getting up on plane. They allow the guys to plane with more weight. It’s really been the requirement for these kinds of fishing vessels to get 8,000 to 10,000 pounds up on plane, get to the tender, and then get back fishing, and that’s been the result they’re getting,” Campbell said.

Campbell estimates that MJP now has somewhere between 40 to 50 boats in Bristol Bay running the UltraJets, and the recent recordbreaking seasons have prompted more installations, with more than a dozen bay boats being outfitted with the jets this offseason. He added that the jets are compatible with most engines, but have proven especially effective with Cummins and Fiat Powertrain (FPT) motors.

“While we’ve had great success with the Cummins engines, we’ve also had very good applications with FPT engines and even with Caterpillar engines,” Campbell said.

Campbell added that the UltraJet HT series has also found a market with Alaska seiners for their skiffs. The UltraJet series is just one line from Swedish maker MJP, which has been outfitting diverse sectors of the marine market for more than 30 years.

— Brian Hagenbuch

explosives from one military base to another. But on one fateful day, he began piloting the members of the Jacuzzi Company.

“I ended up selling them a Navajo aircraft and becoming their corporate pilot,”

says Hill. “They wanted me to have something to do when I wasn’t flying, so I got into their marine jet division and eventually started doing R&D for them.”

When another company bought Jacuzzi, they wanted to shed the marine jet division. “I took out an SBA loan and bought it for pennies on the dollar,” says Hill. “I ran it out of my garage.” Hill built pleasure-craft

jets, and eventually sold one to a fisherman in Ketchikan, Alaska.

“He was very unhappy with it, so I went up there to see what was going on,” Hill says.

Anew single-stage waterjet from Jet-Tech in collaboration with Diesel Outboards and Oxe Marine AB promises higher efficiency and better cavitation margins than traditional systems. The waterjet — a simple bolt-on replacement to the lower unit of any of the Oxe diesel outboards — made a big splash when it was introduced More efficient jets for diesel outboards. recently at the International WorkBoat Show in New Orleans.

“We were beyond overwhelmed with the response and the follow-up from WorkBoat. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I was absolutely shocked,” said Douglas Notace, the president of Diesel Outboards.

Notace said the key to the new waterjet is that it eliminates the shaft in front of the impeller, making for more efficient, uniform water flow than the standard centrifugal jets.

“On a standard waterjet, when the water comes in the intake to go to the impeller face, the water is disrupted by the shaft. You already lose efficiency on your pump because of that shaft. We’ve eliminated that,” Notace said.

With this system, the impeller is driven from behind with no disruption of the water before it hits the jet pump. According to Jet-Tech, the “performance is equal to or better than propeller versions and is matched 1:1 to the unit horsepower-driven prop outboard,” a first for any waterjet product to date.

“It was a significant investment in time and money, in R&D, in patent researching. We spent just under three years from start to finish to get to where we’re at, but with the orders the way they are, it was worth it,” Notace said.

Diesel Outboards started officially taking orders in January, but Notace said had he had jets in hand at the WorkBoat show, he could have sold 16 of them on the floor. A list of nearly two dozen buyers stacked up in less than three days.

Strong initial interest is coming in from the commercial fishing market in the Pacific Northwest through the Diesel Outboards Northwest store in Anacortes, Wash.

Notace added that there have been early orders from ultrashallow workboats in the Gulf of Mexico that run in the Mississippi Delta, where boats tend run aground on the muck.

And while these units are specifically for the diesel outboards, Notace sees the patented system as a scalable product that has a chance to be a game-changer for both outboard and inboard engines.

“Now that we have diesel high-torque, we were able to develop a product that is not just for the outboard world, but also for the inboard world. The potential here for revolutionizing waterjets is huge,” Notace said. — Brian Hagenbuch

Brian Hagenbuch “It was the wrong application for that jet, so I came back and started talking to a designer, Herman Schlappi, the only guy I knew who knew jets inside and out. And I started picking his brain. He showed me a design for an axial flow pump, and we started making the high-thrust, low-speed for the seine skiffs.”

Looking at other markets, Hill designed a mixedflow pump that became the Hi500.

“We took a design Herman had from the Navy, a mixed-flow pump, but kept the big nozzle, so we could still get the thrust but give more than 25 knots. That turned out to be a big hit. We built two, but we ran out of money to produce more, so I went to work for Thrustmaster.”

Hill later parted ways with Thrustmaster and now makes a redesigned version of the Hi500, the Hi502, along with the Hi600 and Hi400. The Hill Jets are popular in Bristol Bay, but Hill is not resting on his laurels. “I think there is still performance to be gained,” he says. “What excites me is figuring out how to do what hasn’t been done yet.”

While it’s unlikely that an Arkansas farm boy with little formal education would be leading a design revolution in water jets, Hill hasn’t let that stop him. “Most of this is common sense,” he says.

Paul Molyneaux is the Boats & Gear editor for National Fisherman and author of “The Doryman’s Reflection.”

By Paul Molyneaux

Hamilton Jet pits its new conical impeller, mixed- ow HTX30 against the competition in the Bristol Bay gillnetter market. hen a typical Bristol Bay gillW netter goes screaming out to an opening and sets its gear in water where a seagull can almost stand, chances are about 50-50 that it’s being propelled by a Hamilton jet. Hamilton has dominated the industry for years, and for many good reasons, but as Hamilton’s sales rep Matt Gordy, says: “There’s a lot of good competition out there.”

For Bristol Bay boats, Hamilton is meeting the competition with the HTX30. “That’s our new tapered impeller, mixed- ow jet.” The HTX30 features a conical wear ring so that the impeller tip tolerance can be reset as it wears down.

“We just put a pair on a Beaver Valley boat,” says Gordy, who notes that it may be the last from the builder. “It’s got our new AVX electronic control system, with all the bells and whistles. It’s got the Mouseboat/3-axis controller, it’s got the handheld remote for the aft deck, so it’s going to be a very advanced bay boat.”

The handheld control comes with a 9-meter umbilical that can plug into a bulkhead tting and give the skipper complete control including lateral movement. “It does the math for you, so those complex maneuvers where you would be dropping a bucket and raising a bucket and then steering to counter to create that lateral movement — our Mouseboat or joystick does that for you.” When it comes to service, Gordy believes Hamilton has the best. “We have the largest spare parts inventory in the world,” he says. “And we have our own foundries and are making our own parts from raw materials, which is pretty unique.”

One of Hamilton’s service managers, Colin Davis, recalls being in Bristol Bay just prior to the opening of salmon season, when a customer came to him with a serious problem.

“I was walking through the boatyard, meeting people, and this guy came and his thrust bearing was failing. I went to see the boat, and the bearing was growling. I arranged for all the parts to get GoldStreaked to Anchorage. I picked them up and ew out to King Salmon and was able to rebuild his front end there in time for him to go shing, all in all it was three days.”

The Finnish marine jet builder Alamarin has been around for decades but is a relative newcomer to the Bristol Bay shery, having made an entry with its Omega 42 and Omega 37 jets.

“We put an Omega 42 on a boat built in Homer, the Evo,” says John Miele, Alamarin sales manager for Asia and the Paci c. “The owner wanted a jet with the power to get up on step with 20,000 pounds, to get those sh to the tender faster.”

The Omega 42 can handle up to 2,040 horsepower, and the Omega 37 can take up to 1,200 horsepower, and both feature Alamarin’s dual-angle shaft, as well as a conical impeller housing that can be shimmed as the impeller wears.

When it comes to competition, Alamarin is betting on service to attract new customers.

“We are setting up a service center in Naknek,” says Miele. “It will be fully stocked with parts and technicians, and there won’t be any delays waiting for parts or service. No one wants to hear that a mechanic is ying up from Seattle.” In a shery where some captains say they’re losing $50,000 for every day they can’t sh, Alamarin could make waves.

Marine Jet Propulsion’s UltraJet is also growing its reputation in the Bristol Bay salmon shery.

Fisherman and boatbuilder Tom Allioti prides himself in choosing only the best components for his boats. His company, NTG Fabrication, equipped their 2021 vessels, including

Hamilton Jet

Hamilton Jet offers new AVX electronic controls that include the Mouseboat, above, and handheld remote control for on deck.

Like many of the big jet makers, NamJet has spent much of the last few years cashing in on the shift from propellers to jets in Bristol Bay. Phil Organ, NamJet’s director of business development, estimates his company has around 130 bay boats with his company’s jets.

“That’s been our go-to for NamJet expands on Alaska markets a while now. Over the last with niche sheries. eight or 10 years, waterjets have almost become standard up there. Most of them that I’ve done are 730- or 750-horse, but they go all the way up to 800-horsepower,” Organ said.

Organ added that a large part of NamJet’s bay projects have been 24-inch, single inline jets paired with Scania or Man engines. Another staple for NamJet in the past years has been seine skiffs for Alaska’s salmon eet.

“We have so many seine skiffs in Alaska with our jets that I’ve lost count,” Organ said.

But while NamJet continues to supply Alaska, they have branched out into other niche sheries, most notably the menhaden sheries in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay.

The menhaden shery uses two seiners, typically 44 feet long, that ride on the back of large steamer, then roll out to scoop up schools of sh that are then pumped onto the steamer. The seiners have traditionally been tted with caged propellers, but shermen suspected the props were spooking the sh.

“There was some thought that the jets would be quieter and not disturb the pods of menhaden, and it has proved a fact. The waterjets just don’t give off a noise signature that bothers the sh,” Organ said.

The jets also allow the seiners to get up to speed quicker, which allows them to get from the steamer to the sh more quickly, and then shortens their circling time when the boats circumnavigate a pod of menhaden.

NamJet is also trying to crack the market for Alaska combination seiners. Organ added that company is also having conversations with Dungeness crab shermen who sh California’s kelp-laden waters.

“They have a trouble with the kelp, and the waterjets do well in kelp. The reason they’re exploring it with us is because our jets operate at a lower RPM. Plus we have a device that protects kelp from wrapping itself around the shaft of the jet,” Organ said. — Brian Hagenbuch

MJP The Finnish company Alamarin entered the Bristol Bay jet market in 2019 with its high-thrust Omega 42 and Omega 37 water jets.

the graphics wrapped Killer, with UltraJets.

“For 35 years, Marine Jet Power has been rede ning the waterjet market with innovation and unsurpassed quality,” says MJP marketing manager, Kelsey Nemeth.

“Engineered and built in Sweden, MJP’s proven stainless steel, mixed- ow and aluminum, axial- ow waterjets are used in many diverse applications, including commercial shing.”

According to Nemeth, the UltraJet is designed with low operating costs and ease of maintenance in mind.

“The team at MJP believes in a full-service approach,” says Nemeth. “From performance and e ciency to aftermarket support and service, MJP is a true marine propulsion partner.”

As Hamilton Jet’s Matt Gordy says, “there’s a lot of good competition out there,” and the primary bene ciaries will be the Bristol Bay shermen.

Paul Molyneaux is the Boats & Gear editor for National Fisherman and author of “The Doryman’s Re ection.”

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