AUSTRALIAN BASED BOAT building company Hart Marine, was grown out of a long-standing family tradition and history in the Maritime industry. They have pioneered the industry in Australia and NZ over 40 years and established themselves as leaders in composite boat building across the globe.
Hart Marine are specialists in ORC Pilot Boat manufacturing across Australasia and the rest of the world. The ORC Pilot Boat is considered the Pilot Boat of choice internationally for Police, and Rescue vessels.
DP World, the largest port operator in the world, are responsible for 78 ports. They were in search of a Pilot Boat builder that could deliver a high-quality product suited to their needs and approached Hart Marine in 2019.
They were looking to produce a self-righting pilot vessel that could cover various requirements, including being able to achieve 6000 hours of operation a year whilst keeping running costs low, and focussing on fuel efficiency. A high-speed vessel to safely and promptly deliver pilots in order to reduce pilot fatigue to ships that operate out of ports in the UAE.
Hart Marine was able to customise a Pilot Boat that met all requirements. The vessel was fitted with twin 500kw engines which produced a speed of 26 knots. Fuel efficiency was achieved by an optimised hull shape and driveline configuration. Hart Marine also included additional intake air filters to shield from desert sands as well as twin gensets and redundant air conditioning to deal with the high temperatures. The biggest challenge was building a vessel to withstand the harsh environmental conditions in the desert. This entailed the addition of sand filters, upgraded cooling systems on engines, redundancy on air conditioning systems as well as additional coalescing filters for engine room ventilation. She also required increased fuel tanks to reduce operational downtime.
Al Dairah was built through a challenging period during covid-19. All meetings were virtual and Hart Marine produced the vessel without any face to face contact.
The new 17.3 Pilot Vessel will operate out of the United Arab Emirates, delivering pilots safely and efficiently to ships operating for approximately 16 out of 24 hours a day.
A Hart Marine spokesman said that they “learnt extensively how to build for export. Al Dairah is the first of 6 pilot boats in a planned program of new builds for DP World and has given Hart Marine a great opportunity to build for export markets”.