Kiwi Girl was built to Blue Fin Charters individual specification to suit their needs for a charter fishing boat. The vessel is licensed by the Department of Marine for use as a passenger vessel, and is powered by a Caterpillar 3126TA 426hp She is capable of a top speed of 30 knots. The huge deck area offers plenty of space for customers to fish from or to come aboard with diving equipment. There is a small galley to provide tea and coffee and light refreshment and on board she carries all the modern lifesaving and navigation equipment. The most impressive quality of the hull shape and design is the lack of slam experienced at speed in head seas. Trials have proven how very capable this hull is of handling all states of acceptable fishing and working weather.

All the latest Kingfisher range of Fastcatch/Sport boats are fitted with the Wills Ridley new fish tail profile rudder design together with a patented new keel arrangement, (three apertures running aft), allowing a degree of water flow through the keel which dramatically improves the handling and manoeuvrability. (which has always been a design problem when fitting a keel to fast planing hulls). The new design allows the boat to gently slide sideways at speed rather than digging in and improves stability at high speeds and throughout the power curve. At realistic speeds it gently beds down into the waves instead of slamming.

Powered by a Cummins 6CTA engine coupled to a Twin Disc TD 5065A gearbox provides cruising speeds of between 17.1 and 17.3 knots with the single lever Kobelt throttle control set to 2200rpm. With minimal engine noise in the wheelhouse the high performance four bladed propeller gave a powerful, comfortable thrust plus good manoeuvrability via the new Fastcatch rudder designed and supplied by Alex van Baalen of Wills Ridley.

Gunners Glory has top level electronics including the latest Olex 3D colour track plotter which interfaces with the boat’s duel frequency echo sounder, (Simrad EQ33). After building up several days of echo sounder/cartography memory it will provide a perfect 3d image of that piece of ground getting better and better with each day of working that area. All electronic equipments was supplied by Simrad of Mylor, Cornwall.

The deck layout is typical of a transom shooting door arrangement. The locked back shooting door, shooting post, pot rails and lifting derrick arrangement on the foremast are all made of alloy and were fabricated by Seaweld, Mylor, Cornwall. Spencer Carter were chosen to supply the hydraulic hauler system a 1 tonne slave unit.

When Kingfisher Boat’s boss, Ron Coote met customer Declan Griffin to discuss his requirements he knew immediately the Fastcatch 31 would be the ideal boat from the well established Kingfisher range.The modern fast planing design in commercial lay-up GRP with deep ‘V’ hull, raked ‘soft nose’ stem, self-draining deck and full width transom stern offered Declan a massive working deck space on a 9.5m boat. The lay-out was improved at Kingfisher by designing a new wheelhouse and whaleback fitted as far forward as possible, adding nearly a metre of extra deck space.

Main engine power comes from an Iveco 8361 SRM32 derated to comply with Declan’s requirements. MPM ZF gearbox drives a C&O 4 bladed propeller with conventional shaft drive. This package combined with the new underwater configuration of the Fastcatch offers very competent manoeuvrability in a single engine boat.

Owner supplied slave hauler together with the forward fitted wheelhouse provides a hauling point well forward. An electronic package was customer supplied through Tom Hand Electronics. A thorough package with plotter, radar, sounder and radio are all of top manufacturers quality.
On trials in Falmouth Bay the boat performed very well on a blustery day with a short sea. Declan and his colleagues were very pleased with her performance and handling but most of all with the comfortable entry into the short seas.