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OUTSTANDING PASSENGER VESSELS OF 1988 ALEXANDRIA BELLE Blount Marine In 1988, busy passenger boat builder Blount Marine Corporation of Warren, R.I., delivered the 87- foot replica steam paddlewheeler Alexandria Belle to Uncle Sam Tours of Alexandria Bay, N.Y. The third vessel to have been built by Blount for the Combined 1000 Island Boat Tours' Uncle Sam Tours, the Alexandria Belle is pow- ered by a pair of Detroit Diesel 8V71 diesel engines to speeds of about 10 knots. The 87-foot day/dinner ex- cursion boat has a beam of 32 feet 2 inches, depth of 8 feet and loaded draft of 4 feet 8 inches. Cruising the St. Lawrence Seaway, the replica Mississippi steam paddlewheeler Alexandria Belle offers her passen- gers panoramic views of the islands of the popular Thousand Islands region of Upstate New York. The 400-passenger excursion boat has dining facilities on her main and upper deck and outside seating on her bridge deck. Manned by a crew of up to 25, the Alexandria Belle has Photos (clockwise from top left): Nils Dacke; Eagle; Annabel Lee; and West Virginia Belle. 16 a potable water capacity of 515 gal- lons and a fuel capacity of 1,122 gal- lons. Her special features include a non-propulsive stern wheel and ro- tating lift/lower bow ramp for easy passenger boarding/disembarking operations. She offers a variety of live enter- tainment on her three-hour cruises, including dinner and comedy cruises. ALEXANDRIA BELLE Equipment List Main engines (2) Detroit Diesel Reduction gears Capito Engine controls Morse Generators (2) Lister/Petter Generator control panel Murphy Steering system Wagner Bilge pump JABSCO Fire pump Gorman-Rupp Radar Furuno VHF radiotelephone Raytheon Engine monitors Murphy Horn Kahlenberg Searchlight Ray-Line AMORELLA Brodosplit In 1988, Yugoslavian shipbuilder Brodosplit delivered the 37,500-gt Amorella, the first of two new gener- ation Baltic cruise ferries, to owners SF Line for operation by Viking Line on the Turku-Mariehamn- Stockholm service route. The 2,200-passenger-capacity fer- ry, which also can accommodate 620 cars/53 trucks, has an overall length of 555-1/2 feet, breadth of 90-1/2 feet, depth of 28 feet and draft of 19-1/2 feet. With a deadweight of 2,800 metric tons, the Amorella is powered by four SEMT Pielstick- Jadranbrod 12PC2-6V/400E diesel engines rated at 7,965 hp each. The 12-deck vessel, which has 565 pas- senger cabins, can reach speeds in excess of 21 knots. The order for the Amorella and her sister ship, which is expected to be delivered in the spring of next year, represented an important breakthrough into the passenger ferry building sector for Brodosplit and the Yugoslavian shipbuilding industry. One outstanding feature of the Amorella is that 90 percent of her passengers will have berths, whereas current generation Baltic ferries on the route provide only about 60 per- cent of the passengers with berths. The outfitting of the Amorella's public spaces was subcontracted to Danish company Aalborg Vaerft. BAY LADY Service Marine In the first quarter of 1988, Mor- gan City, La.-based boatbuilder Ser- vice Marine Industries delivered the elegant 600-passenger cruise boat Bay Lady to operator Baltimore Harbor Bay Tours, Ltd., Baltimore, Md., for dinner cruise/excursion service on the Chesapeake Bay. The sleek 140-foot-long vessel has a yacht-like hull shape and is de- signed for luxury harbor cruising. Her interior features fine appoint- ments throughout, including custom bars with back lighting, polished brass fixtures and teakwood ac- cents. A sophisticated atmosphere is created by the use of mirrors and an excellent sound system. Passengers are kept comfortable by 60 tons of Carrier air conditioning, and out- side glare is reduced by the use of tinted glass. The Bay Lady, a sub-chapter T vessel, is powered by a pair of Cum- mins 300-hp NT-855 diesel engines. The diesels, which were supplied by Cummins Mid-South, Morgan City, La., are fitted with Nelson exhaust silencers to reduce engine noise. Circle 180 on Reader Service Card Maritime Reporter/Engineering News
