The Future of Fishing Vessel Hulls
TriNav Marine Design’s First E-FINN Hits the Water and Steams for Nova Scotia
Three years after TriNav Marine Design won the Hull Design Efficiency Challenge from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and Impact Canada, its first E-FINN vessel recently launched from Harbour Grace Ocean Enterprises, Newfoundland and Labrador.
After some delays in the building of the initial vessel, TriNav Marine Design’s Director, Rick Young, said he is pleased to finally see his company’s design steam to its home port.
“We’re certainly really happy to get one out on the water and now we’re going to get some real-life feedback from the owner,” said Young. “It should be well tested. She’s multi-purpose — crab, groundfish, lobster — he’s going to be using it with a variety of different species and different conditions.”
The first E-FINN design hit the water in early September under the ownership of Harold Henneberry of Sambro, Nova Scotia. He said that in the three days he has had his new fishing boat, the overall design has felt good and performed well.
“I think it’s a good boat; they did a good job building it. I think she’s good and strong,” said Henneberry.
The hull design came out on top of 19 submissions for the Hull Efficiency Design Challenge thanks to the E-FINN’s balance between fuel efficiency and commercialization potential. The design philosophy of the E-FINN took the saying “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” to heart in that it paid homage to the tried-and-true design of the Nova Scotia-style lobster boat, while tweaking the design to the modern standards of fuel efficiency.
“With all of our knowledge in the industry and talking to fishermen and boatbuilders, we felt the most practical design and the most easily commercialized design would be a monohull vessel that looks basically like a lobster boat that people are familiar with in the Southwest Nova Scotia area, alongside Newfoundland and Labrador and right through Atlantic Canada,” said Young.
“The hull is basically a lobster boat with a lot of improvements to improve the efficiency. It’s a combination of all the little bits and pieces that make up the difference.”
Rick Young, TriNav Marine Design’s Director
TriNav Marine Design did what it set out to do with the E-FINN, with the hull design featuring many efficiency improving features that depart from the classic design in the <15m category. The hull features a reimagined, elongated bow that is fared into the hull with an increased waterline length.
“It’s got finer hull lines over that short length. The waterlines are fared further forward, so we get a better entry angle,” said Young. “The bow shape is such that it creates less of a bow wave, so there is less energy used to push the vessel through the water. We also tapered the transom corners to reduce the breadth on the waterline at the transom to reduce drag, so the vessel is not dragging as much water with it as it moves forward.”
Another hallmark of the E-FINN is a clean hull design. Anything attached to the exterior of the hull on TriNav Marine Design’s stock design has been stripped away from the exterior to further reduce drag and frictional resistance.
“The idea is that we would reduce resistance by recessing keel coolers, recessing transducers and faring the underwater hull so it’s nice and smooth,” said Young. In order for vessel owners to maximize the intended optimized efficiency and performance of the hull, all proposed design features should be adopted.
The E-FINN also veered from tradition yet again by adopting an air foil design rudder similar to the wing of an airplane, which again serves to improve water flow and efficiency. The hull also features many weight reductions that serve to maximize efficiency without sacrificing strength. The distribution of weight and spaces within the boat were also given special consideration to improve the trim in various fishing conditions.
When all the design recommendations by TriNav are followed, these small but significant changes add up to around 20 per cent in fuel savings on the E-FINN hull, with the hull costing nothing more to build than a traditional design.
“The hull itself doesn’t cost any more to build,” said Young. “It’s still the same hull, you’re just doing things a little differently. So, over a 20-year period, that’s a lot of fuel saved and a lot of CO2 that’s reduced from going into the atmosphere.”
Beyond the current application of the hull design being applied to a fibreglass 49-foot vessel, Young said the E-FINN hull is applicable to vessels of all sizes and construction materials.
“The ideas of the bow and the stern and this clean hull approach can be applied to any size, actually” said Young. “We’re looking at doing some preliminary work now on an aquaculture support vessel, of steel construction, that would have all of the E-FINN features.”
Looking to the future, TriNav Marine Design is excited to see two further E-FINNs under construction in Harbour Grace, so far. He said that while the hull design’s efficiency has been tweaked about as much as possible for the kind of work Atlantic Canadian harvesters need it for, the next step is adopting emission-reducing, energy-efficient means of powering future E-FINN vessels.
“We should be looking at alternate propulsion systems, like diesel-electric battery hybrid propulsion systems or hydrogen propulsion systems,” said Young. “We are involved in a research project internally where we’re analyzing what is available in the market. Most of our time was spent on hydrogen cells and hydrogen propulsion, but the practicality of that for small vessels is fairly far out. Now, we’re going to pay more attention to diesel-electric hybrid propulsion systems.”
Young estimated that with the addition of a diesel-electric propulsion system in an E-FINN hull, fuel savings could improve by another 15–20 per cent. He said that while hybrid propulsion systems may cost more upfront, the federal government needs to provide assistance for harvesters to make the switch over to greener technology to hit Canada’s greenhouse gas emission goals.
“Each vessel will cost more, likely in excess of an additional $500,000, but that’s not a lot of money in the big picture to invest in an industry and give an example of how this could work. It’s critical that government funding be a part of these next few years in assisting vessel owners who want to build new, but want to go green,” said Young.
“The propulsion system will cost more because it will have expensive batteries, electric motors and switching gear along with a diesel engine, but you have to plan these projects over 20 years. This is not a five year thing. Anything with energy efficiency has to be looked at over a long period of time, and ultimately in 20 years from now, this will be just normal. Everybody will be doing it.”