The latest delivery from Macduff Shipyards is the new Forever Faithful PD-289, delivered to Andrew West of St Fergus.
This is the fourth vessel delivered to the West family by the yard and the new Forever Faithful represents a new design to bridge the gap between the 19 metre no-ticket design and the yard’s 24 metre design. The new twin-rigger is 21.50 metre overall, and has a 7.10 metre beam with a depth of 4.05 metres. It has a double chine hull form with a bulbous bow and transom stern and the steelwork was contracted to a yard in Poland which delivered the zinc-coated and fully painted hull to Macduff for completion.
With the exception of the wheelhouse and masts the entire vessel is built from Lloyds Grade A steel. Working from aft to forward the below main deck is arranged into four compartments with cabins, engine room, fishroom and forepeak. Above main deck is arranged in the traditional layout with aft shelter, casing, fish handling area and winch room forward. The layout throughout the vessel has been designed specifically to the owners requirements with a noticeable difference including a small steel bulkhead bounded store within the processing area on the centre of the vessel where an ice machine and various small machinery is situated.
The main engine is a 600hp Caterpillar C18 ACERT close coupled to a Reintjes gearbox with a 7.476:1 reduction. The vessel features a 2000mm propeller designed and supplied by Teignbridge Propellers which is installed inside a high lift low drag nozzle. The remaining stern gear package was designed in house by the shipyard and produced by Macduff Precision Engineering on CNC machines. Sea trials demonstrated encouraging results with this stern gear package with very smooth and quiet performance in all operating conditions.
The T700 150hp bow thruster is form Hardy Engineering .
The yard supplied the three-drum trawl winch, the twin split net drums and the gilson winch, and the MKB7 short post crane with tilting 24” power block head and MFB8 discharge crane with winch are from Thistle. Macduff also supplied the catch handling system while the fishroom chillers and the icemaker are from Premier Refrigeration in Fraserburgh. Switchboards and electrical systems were fitted by RD Downie Limited and Woodson Marine Electronics supplied Forever Faithful’s marine electronics.
