Silverback Marine unveils industry-first collared landing craft

Silverback Marine's latest offering is a fully collared, large-door landing craft.

Tacoma, Wash., aluminum boat builder Silverback Marine has released details of its latest brainchild for the small commercial workboat market: a fully collared, large-door landing craft.

Collared RHIB style boats are widely used, particularly in law enforcement, and landing craft type vessels have a broad range of applications. Silverback’s innovation combines both vessel styles into one.

“We’ve always dreamed of developing a product for the Coast Guard or Navy that was unique from anything they’ve ever used before- and that was the inspiration behind this innovative design,” said Ian Gracey, CEO.

Available in 27-foot and 34-foot versions, the vessel will be powered by OXE Diesel Outboards, promising a 40% fuel savings over conventional gasoline outboards.

The vessel is also available in a 100% electrically powered version using twin 300 hp Photon Marine electric outboards.

Vessel features include an onboard head, pass-through cabin with shock mitigating seats for six crew and a 64-inch wide bow door with generous payload capacity.

Landing craft style vessels allow transport of small vehicles, equipment, and gear with easy access to most beaches, eliminating the need for dock space in ship-to-shore operations, and accommodate the increasing maintenance needs of AUV, ASV and USV equipment.

“We don’t build collars currently, and don’t plan to, so the current stage of the project is partnering with another builder to handle the collars” says Gracey. “Rather than reinvent the wheel and work against other RHIB and collared boat builders, a collaborative approach will be much more beneficial to not only the industry, but to the customers”.

Silverback Marine has a team approach to delivering vessels, and many of its designs are professionally engineered by naval architecture firm Elliot Bay Design Group, which is also developing this hull.

Another of Silverback’s offerings is an openness for its vessels to be built under license by other builders.

“Our goal is to deliver new ideas and new mindsets to the industry-and with so many great builders out there already, a collaborative, rather than competitive, approach is the fastest way to deliver better boats with excellent service to a deserving market.” said Gracey.

With a vision of “bringing the big-boat experience to the small workboat market,” other current projects in the works at Silverback include a Subchapter M avoiding truckable minitug that has look and lines of a classic larger tug.

Meantime, Silverback is inviting collared boatbuilders looking to collaborate on the landing craft project to reach out to it directly.