Austal USA Catamaran Starts Fifth Year In Service

“Lake Express” - the 58 metre high speed vehicle-passenger ferry built at Austal USA - has commenced the fifth year of its successful service across Lake Michigan in the US.

As the first high speed vehicle-passenger catamaran built at Austal USA’s shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, “Lake Express” now transports more than 100,000 travellers between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Muskegon, Michigan each year.

With a service speed of 34 knots, “Lake Express” provides a crossing time of just two hours and 30 minutes, halving the time it would take to drive around the southern tip of Lake Michigan.

At the time of its launch in 2004, the vessel was the largest high speed catamaran built at Austal USA, a title now held by the 107 metre vehicle-passenger ferry “Alakai” delivered to Hawaii Superferry in 2007.

The vessel was also the inaugural large high speed ferry to operate in the continental United States, after the establishment of Austal USA in 1999 allowed the supply of advanced large fast ferry technology to American operators for the first time.

Austal USA now boasts the largest trained workforce for the construction of aluminium high speed vessels in the US, currently employing more than 1100 workers. When “Lake Express” was delivered in 2004, Austal USA had only previously delivered smaller catamarans and crewboats, and employed a workforce of just 116 workers - underlining the remarkable growth at the shipyard over recent years.

Austal USA Chief Executive Officer Bob Browning said the fifth anniversary of “Lake Express” entering service combined with last week's launch of the 127 metre Littoral Combat Ship "Independence" is a reminder of what has been achieved at Austal USA since the yard was established.

“Since inception we have taken the deliberate strategy of carefully growing the capacity and skills of the shipyard in order to be able to confidently deliver larger high performance aluminium ships,” Mr Browning said.

“This capability cannot be developed overnight without great risk of failure as we have seen previously with programmes at other shipyards, including several in Canada, Europe and Asia taking on large high speed vessel projects without an appropriate learning curve."

As well as the current LCS programme, construction is also continuing on a second 107 metre high speed vehicle-passenger ferry for Hawaii Superferry, which is scheduled for launch later this year.

“Lake Express” is equipped to carry 250 passengers in modern comfort, along with 46 vehicles and 12 motorcycles and is powered by four MTU 16V 4000 engines driving Kamewa waterjets.

PRINCIPAL PARTICULARS Length overall: 58.4 metres (192 ft 7 in) Length waterline: 52.2 metres (171 ft 3 in) Beam: 17.6 metres (57 ft 9 in) Hull depth moulded: 5.00 metres (16 ft 5 in) Hull draft (maximum): 2.5 metres (8 ft 3 in)

CAPACITIES Deadweight (maximum): 148 tonnes Crew: 8 Passengers: 248 Vehicles: 46 cars

PROPULSION Engines: 4 x MTU 16V 4000 M70 (2320 kW at 2,000rpm each) Gearboxes: 4 x ZF 7550 Waterjets: 4 x Kamewa 80 SII Speed: 34 knots at 90% MCR with 100 tonnes of deadweight