Hey guys,
I just saw this on the Work Boat site - Link Below:
Open Wide
New patrol boat was designed around its windows.
By Michael Crowley, Correspondent
The cabin structure on boats smaller than 30 feet seems pretty straightforward. There’s a top, front, back, and sides, as well as openings for windows and a door or two. The structure is basically a box with openings.
A different approach has been taken at Metal Shark Aluminum Boats LLC in Jeanerette, La. In the past, the boatbuilder has worked on “removable and retractable cabins, folding cabins and sliding windows,” said Chris Allard, Metal Shark president. “Now what we’ve done is a big step forward.”
He’s referring to the window design for the U.S. Coast Guard’s 29'×8'6" Response Boat-Small that Metal Shark is building to replace the original 25' RB-S fleet. “No one has designed a boat around the windows. That’s pretty much what we did,” Allard said.
Imagine a situation where, within about 30 seconds, you can convert a boat from a completely enclosed cabin to an almost open-style boat, while still carrying everything onboard. You can do that in the new Coast Guard boats.
“What we are doing is that the whole cabin side is integral with the windows and it essentially retracts into itself,” Allard said. “The cabin isn’t a box anymore. It’s basically a side and a top. The lower half is the sides, the top is held up independently. The structure isn’t in the windows around it, so the windows can be completely glass or non-weight bearing. The windows retract — a la a car window — into the side of the boat.”
The windows, which are tempered safety glass, are lowered and raised with stainless steel screw-drive hand cranks. “It’s similar to the automotive style,” Allard noted.
Close to half of the cabin sides on the 29' Coast Guard boat is window space. Several advantages come with this design, including improved visibility. “Phenomenally” is the word Allard uses to describe the improvement. “It’s a very odd feeling. It’s like an amusement park ride in a way. There’s nothing around you.”
In less than a minute, the cabin can be changed from a closed-in, heated structure to an open boat with cross ventilation. If it gets cold, the windows can be rolled back up.
This flexibility comes in handy for small Coast Guard boats since the agency often relocates its boats from one area of the country to another. “They can go from Maine to Alaska to Florida and the requirements are very different. This allows them to configure one boat depending on the environment,” Allard said.
Metal Shark had previously built boats with removable doors, hatches and panels, “but the problem is if you are underway, [the removable parts] are off them and not stored on the boat,” said Allard. “If it’s on, you can’t take it off because you don’t have any place to store it. So we wanted to design something where the [windows] aren’t taken off the boat.”
Metal Shark worked with Diamond Sea Glaze in British Columbia to develop the new window design that is being built into 500 new Coast Guard RB-Ses.
http://www.workboat.com/newsdetail.aspx ... nformzNews
Pretty Cool!
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