Jensen to design, production engineer Lindblad newbuilds

JANUARY 26, 2016 — Jensen Maritime, Crowley Maritime Corp.’s Seattle, WA, based naval architecture and marine engineering company, is to provide detailed design and production engineering services for the two, 100 passenger, U.S. flagged, coastal cruise ships recently ordered by Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc. (see earlier story).

The twin screw diesel ships, will be built at the Washington state shipyard of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders (NBBB) under a $94.8 million shipbuilding contract and have planned delivery dates in second quarter 2017 and 2018.

The vessels will operate tours between Baja, Costa Rica and Panama during the winter months and southeast Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Canada during the summer months.

For this project, Jensen will utilize its innovative 3D modeling capabilities to allow Lindblad to confirm the vessel’s layout, maintenance envelopes and operational access prior to construction.

All the details of the structural, electrical, mechanical and HVAC systems of the vessel will be combined into one comprehensive, full-size 3D, computer model resulting in a virtual vessel that can be inspected early in the design process for safety, maintainability and constructability.

“We at Jensen are pleased to showcase our full service design and production engineering services for this exciting newbuild project,” said Johan Sperling, vice president, Jensen. “With our 3D capabilities, the customer will have virtually walked every deck and inspected every system long before stepping onto the vessel and long before each system is installed, giving them further confidence that this ship will be exactly the high quality passenger vessel they intended.”

“These new ships mark an exciting step in the long-term growth of the company, and enable us to capitalize on the substantial demand for our expeditions,” said Sven Lindblad, president and CEO of Lindblad, which works in partnership with National Geographic. “With our significant resources we can continue to deliver on our promise of expedition travel at its best, and can now expand our unique offerings in the Americas where we have very strong demand.”

Features of the new 238-foot ships include:

• 50 cabins, fitness room and spa.
• An outdoor walkway around the entire sun deck, which will feature dining and entertainment facilities.
• State-of-the-art expedition technology, including a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), video microscope, hydrophone and bow-cam, full warm and cold water diving gear and underwater cameras.