Size
- Look for a boat or skiff in the 17-to-20-foot range for maneuverability.
Lesson 2
Buy a Boat
Back to: Map Your Resources
What Type of Boat Do I Need?
Increasingly, ocean farmers are considering owning a small fleet of boats for different purposes on their farms. A farm operating at a full commercial scale might have one or two skiffs for outplanting and routine maintenance, and a vessel with a more substantial platform—either a larger fishing boat or barge—for gear installation and harvest.
There is no one boat that will meet all of your needs, but with a little ingenuity, a simple outboard-powered skiff can be adapted to work for the vast majority of tasks on an ocean farm. Depending on the size of your gear, you might just need to call a friend or hire someone with a larger boat or barge to help you install and move your anchors.
When you’re looking at buying a boat to run your ocean farm, here are a few things to consider:
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Layout
- An open floor plan is desirable for easier customization and a large working space.
- Carolina Skiffs and Boston Whalers are commonly used boats for kelp farming on the East Coast. In Alaska, many farmers use aluminum setnet skiffs.
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Material
- Fiberglass boats are more common and come up for sale pretty frequently. Fiberglass is a more delicate material than aluminum, but you can fix it yourself with low-tech tools and materials.
- Welded aluminum boats are more durable and great for running up on the beach or bolting custom rigging to the gunnels. But, they require welding skills to repair, which can make maintenance or adaptations more costly.
- When purchasing a used boat, consider the condition of the hull and the boat’s structural components. Older boats used wood for the transom, floor, and stringers. These wood components can rot out over time, so try to assess their integrity when considering a candidate boat (in other words, pay attention when you walk or jump on the floor to see if there’s any give, and look for buckling in the deck of the boat).
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Engine
- We recommend you look for a boat with an outboard engine. You will be working around a lot of lines in the water, and it’s likely you might catch or tangle a line in your propeller. It is much easier to get a line out of your propeller on an outboard engine than an inboard engine.
- An outboard with tiller steering gives you more floor space on the deck of your boat and is a simpler system to configure and maintain than a console with wheel steering (but if you’ve never used a tiller arm before, it takes a little while to get the hang of steering and maneuvering!).
- Having a reliable outboard engine is a must for working on the water in the winter. All of the major brands make very reliable four-stroke engines nowadays. But, new four-stroke outboard engines are expensive—roughly $100/horsepower bought new. If the boat you’re looking at has an old two-stroke engine, you’ll want to factor in the cost of repowering the boat as your operation grows.
GreenWave’s Boats
On the GreenWave farm, we use our boat, Mookie, a 23-foot Privateer for hauling anchors and harvest. For outplanting or routine maintenance, we use our 16.5-foot Boston Whaler skiff, Willa.
