Elliott Bay Design Group, Seattle, has designed a new river class vehicle ferry for the North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry Division, which will be built at Bollinger Shipyards, Lockport, La. The vessel is due to be delivered by March 1, 2019.
The new 183' ferry will have room for 38 regular-sized vehicles. It will serve as a replacement for the 22-year-old Thomas A. Baum, a Hatteras-class ferry that carries 26 vehicles.
Once built, the new vessel will be the Ferry Division’s first new car ferry since the Sea Level, which was christened in 2012 and also designed by Elliott Bay Design Group.
“This is a great first step in phasing out our smaller boats and replacing them with larger ones,” Ferry Division director Harold Thomas said in a statement announcing the contract. “Eventually it will allow us to increase our capacity with the same number of scheduled trips.”
Elliott Bay Design Group LLC (EBDG) is an employee-owned company with offices in Seattle, New Orleans and Ketchikan, Alaska, that provides naval architecture, marine engineering and production support services to owners, operators and shipyards across the U.S. With a focus on responsiveness, EBDG delivers designs that are better to build and better to operate.
