HISTORY
Nekton Diving Cruises has designed, constructed and presently operates the Nekton Pilot and her sister ship the Nekton Rorqual, both unique Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) live-aboard dive vessels catering to scuba divers and water sports enthusiasts on week-long cruises.
Nekton started as an idea in 1986. Detailed design work on the first Nekton liveaboard dive boat began in 1989. After receiving U.S. Coast Guard approval and obtaining start-up financing, construction of the first vessel began in 1993 with its launch twelve months later on February 28, 1994.
The launch of the Nekton Pilot signified a major breakthrough in small passenger vessel travel as the Nekton Pilot is the world's first SWATH vessel specifically designed to safely and comfortably carry small groups to remote areas for the purpose of scuba diving and water sports. In the course of utilizing the SWATH technology in the design of a specific purpose built SWATH liveaboard dive vessel, two United States Patents were obtained numbered 5,140,924 and 5,282,763. These patents are for the elevating dive platform that is used to enable divers and snorkelers to easily enter and exit the water and for rotating bow thrusters.
The Nekton Pilot has won numerous accolades including Popular Mechanic's "Design and Engineering Award", Business Week magazine's "Best New Product" and a special feature on the internationally syndicated television show Beyond 2000.
On May 1, 1994 the Nekton Pilot began operating on regularly scheduled week-long cruises from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to remote areas of the Bahama Islands. The vessel's cruises cater to scuba divers and snorkelers interested in experiencing the underwater world firsthand and learning more about the marine environment. With a maximum of thirty passengers (whom we refer to as "guests"), cruises are intimate, active and very conducive to personal learning experiences involving the environment and water sports such as scuba diving. The marketplace readily accepted the SWATH liveaboard concept driving occupancies for the Nekton Pilot past 90% in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Nekton Diving Cruises had found a winning formula and was ready to grow the fleet.
In 1997, the Company started plans for development of a shipyard whose design was optimized for the new construction of SWATH vessels like the Nekton Pilot. Contracting with an existing shipyard for build out of the Nekton fleet was not pursued for three reasons. The first is that the SWATH technology is a new technology and when a yard is bidding on a vessel that they do not have experience with they will add significant margin to the price to cover the perceived risk, The second reason is that existing yards scaled to competitively build a vessel the general size of the Nekton vessel's would not be configured to handle the greater width or beam of the vessel. A vessel transport system would be expensive to modify or build compared to the cost of a new purpose built facility. The third reason is that based on the rapid growth of the occupancy rate for the Nekton Pilot, Nekton was contemplating a decade long build-out of up to 10 vessels and the least cost route to deliver those vessels was to have available a purpose built facility dedicated to and managed for the lowest cost production of the SWATH liveaboard vessels the Company was seeking.
An exhaustive search was completed thru the entire Southeast United States for the best available location. 25 acres in the panhandle of Florida was finally selected. The site in Port St. Joe, Florida was purchased from the St. Joe Company (JOE) in two parts. The sale of the first 10 acres was closed on July 12, 2000. The second 15 acre option was closed in December of 2006. Excavation and building of Gulf County Shipbuilding, Inc. (www.GCShip.com) began in 2000. Construction of Nekton's second SWATH liveaboard vessel also began in 2000. Saturday, October 13, 2001 the second Nekton vessel, the Nekton Rorqual started cruises. Scheduled cruises were to begin three weeks earlier but due to 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the first cruises were delayed.
After 9-11, due to the economic impacts of the terrorist attacks as well as the multitude of major geopolitical events in the years following including the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, SARS, World economic recession, runaway fuel prices, etc., Nekton was unable to continue the steady production of the Nekton SWATH vessels. Gulf County Shipbuilding, Inc. began to pursue third party unrelated customers. That effort has gone very well with a number of regular customers using the rail for maintenance of existing vessels as well as construction of new vessels.
Regular customers include the Florida Fish and Wildlife, US Army Corps of Engineers, Captain Anderson Headboats and Sight-seeing, Inland Marine Dredging, ABC Dredging, The S/V Nirvana, Grady Marine and others.
The customers for Gulf County Shipbuilding, Inc. tend to be larger vessels over 65 feet operated primarily for commercial purposes. The marine rail is capable of hauling 300 foot long vessels of up to 1,000 tons. The setup cost to use the marine rail starts at a minimum $4,500 which is cost prohibitive for smaller vessels.
Gulf County Shipbuilding, Inc. has also spun off another business utilizing the 50 ton marine travelift. The travelift is used during new construction of SWATH Liveaboard vessels to move large subassemblies called modules from remote fabrication areas to the final assembly and erection location over the marine rail.
The spin-off business is called Port St. Joe Boatworks & Dry Storage (www.PSJBoatworks.com). The boatyard business caters to vessels ranging from 25 feet to 65 feet and weighing up to 100,000 pounds. The travelift uses slings to quickly lift smaller vessels out of the water with prices starting as little as $300. This is primarily the pleasure boat and yacht market and it has also experienced significant and accelerating growth. During the peak fall, winter and spring months the boatyard moves on average a boat per day. Summer tends to be somewhat slower as the boats are being operated during the summer boating season.
Today, Nekton Diving Cruises operates the two SWATH liveaboard vessels on ten different itineraries including Belize Central, Belize South, Cayman Islands, Humpback Whales of the Silver Bank departing from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, Mona Island on the West coast of Puerto Rico, Vieques and St. Croix from the east coast of Puerto Rico, the Southern Bahamas from Georgetown, Bahamas and three different western Bahamas itineraries from Fort Lauderdale, Florida including Cay Sal, Cay Lobos and Northwest Bahamas.
The Company manages all areas of operating the "mini cruise vessel" including staffing, marketing, reservations, telemarketing, direct mail, collateral fulfillment, shoreside support, ground transportation for arriving and departing guests, cruise services including cabin service, meal service, scuba diving instruction and supervision, ship maintenance and repairs, fuel bunkering, bookkeeping, accounting and finance, regulatory compliance, international operations and industry relations.
The Nekton Pilot and Nekton Rorqual are each staffed with a total of seventeen crew members of which twelve are aboard any given week and five are off on rotation. The onboard crew of twelve includes two U.S. Coast Guard certified captains, a ship's engineer, chef, an activities director, and six scuba diving instructors. All of the crew members are cross-trained to allow crew relief on a regular rotating basis. Complementing the crew is the administrative office staff of seven full-time and two part-time employees.
Nekton is endeavoring to grow to a fleet of at least ten vessels. Not only will the fleet concept bring many economies of scale to the Company, it will also allow the Company to retain and recirculate customers for a much longer period of time. Nekton plans to continue operating present and future vessels in premier diving locations around the world. In addition to the existing itineraries Nekton is pursuing premier locations including Federated States of Micronesia, Pohnpei, Truk, Palau, Costa Rica, Guadalupe Islands, Samoa, Fiji, and Galapagos.