In June, the Multi-Agency Craft Conference was held at the Navy’s Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Norfolk, Va. That should be enough to tell you that this is an event with a serious military and law enforcement presence.
The theme was “Tactical Applications of Technological Innovation” with a lot of talk about Navy and Coast Guard patrol boats and combatant craft for naval special warfare and the Marines. There was also a showing of utility boats for the government and navy.
But Workskiff, an aluminum boatbuilder in Sedro Woolley, Wash., took a different tack. It could have brought one of its RIBs to the show and matched it up with the likes of Metal Shark and Safe Boats, but Workskiff’s Jeff Clark thought, “Hey, I’m going to take something different, something that shows our versatility above and beyond what’s normal out there.”
So he showed up at MACC with a 21'×8'6 aluminum skiff with push knees on the front, a light bar on the back and a pair of 150-hp Mercury outboards on the transom. After the show, it was delivered to Walt Disney World, Orlando, Fla. It is being used as a small pushboat to maneuver a 75-ton barge full of propane at the Epcot Theme Park.
The barge is used for the “creation of the world show and is part of the big bang when they light the propane off,” Clark said. When that happens, Workskiff’s 21-footer is safely tied to a nearby dock.
The Whalen police light bar and a spotlight mounted on it come in handy when maneuvering the barge. Clark said there could be several other boats nearby, including tour boats, but with the lights on, the small pushboat and its barge are readily visible.
The 21-footer is built on a cathedral hull, which vaguely resembles a trimaran, but has a center hull and two half hulls on the outside without space between them. The name comes from its resemblance to a medieval cathedral if you invert the hull and cut a section out of it.
“It’s a really stable platform and good for control,” said Clark.
Disney uses other barges and skiffs for the fireworks display. “We will eventually replace them with the design we built. It’s the first of several we anticipate building.”
With the 21-footer delivered, the crew at Workskiff was building a couple of 25'×8'6" boats for an oil company in the Congo and a 29'×9'6" boat for Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. — M. Crowley
