Locally Designed Boat Named Boat of the Year

by | Tuesday, December 23, 2014 |

A boat designed, built and operated locally, has been named the Boat of the Year for 2014 by WorkBoat Magazine.

The announcement came at the publication’s annual International WorkBoat Show from December 3-December 5 in New Orleans. “Great Expectations”, an offshore refueling vessel that is owned by John W. Stone Oil Distributor (Gretna) and Edison Chouest Offshore (Cut Off), was awarded the distinction of Boat of the Year.

Great Expectations works out of Chouest’s C-Port in Port Fourchon. The 314-foot by 66-foot vessel was built at Chouest’s LaShip location in Houma, and it has provided new opportunities for the distributor, according to Reed Davison, Project Manager for John W. Stone Oil Distributor.

According to Senior Editor, Ken Hocke, this is the first year that the publication has named a Boat of the Year, instead of only naming a Top-10 list of vessels of significance.

Each year, WorkBoat Magazine covers around 70 or 80 vessels, which it this year narrowed down to one Boat of the Year. A vessel’s uniqueness was the primary consideration for the honor.

Great Expectations was originally built as a replacement for the single-hull Stone Buccaneer, which the company was forced to take out of operation due to requirements of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Single-hulled vessels are no longer permitted as of the beginning of 2015. The new vessel has a fuller house than a traditional supply boat, and it is classified as a tank vessel. The boat can carry 1.5 million gallons of fuel to rigs, which is twice what the previous boat could handle.

According to Davidson, “It means a lot. To Stone, it means we are transitioning into the major leagues with this vessel. We are able to go to new customers and grow as a company. We can visit a lot of different offshore structures we weren’t able to visit in the past.”

Speaking of Great Expectations, Davison went on to express that “[i]t’s just not like anything else that’s been built.”

And Hocke agreed.He conveyed that the vessel is the most state-of-the-art boat that the magazine found. Said Hocke, “Some of the best workboats in the world are built in Houma and have been for years and will be for years to come. We couldn’t find a comparable vessel, which is something you couldn’t say about the others. This was unique. Nobody built something like this that we could find.”

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