ABU DHABI — For the past two years, Kvichak Marine Industries has been shopping its 45-foot response boat-medium (RBM) around the Arabian Gulf region. Persistence paid off in January, when a deal was signed to deliver two pilot boat versions of the RBM to the Port of Duqm, Oman.
The craft is already in production for the US Coast Guard and the first of 170 RBMs was delivered in 2008.
"We've had an RBM out here since 2013," Keith Whittemore, president and founder of Kvichak, pronounced "kwee-chak", said Wednesday at the NAVDEX portion of the IDEX show here. The vessel, named Vigilant, has a full-time captain and, Whittemore said, has visited most of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, embarking naval, coast guard, port and government officials who get to see firsthand what the boat can do.
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"Bringing boats here is very expensive," he said, and if it's only for a single show, it's necessary to bring potential customers stateside to see the craft. "You buy a lot of plane tickets," he noted.
But keeping a craft full-time in the harsh environment of the gulf isn't only for promotional reasons, Whittemore said.
"We brought the boat out here to learn about the area, to experience all the conditions here." Heat, sand and numerous other factors all have an effect, he said, and while the RBM meets all 11 mission requirements of the US Coast Guard, "every country here has its own requirements. There is no one-size-fits-all option."
The experience has paid off, Whittemore said.
"The boat has an intranet, tracking more than 200 different parameters — things like engine performance, temperature, electrical systems, environmental details. Every week the data is downloaded and emailed to the US for our engineers to evaluate.
"And we've learned a ton," he said. "We now believe that if we deliver a boat here, we'll do it right. If you don't, you go home."
A number of competitors for the RBM were present at the 2013 NAVDEX show, but fewer craft showed up in 2015. Gone, for example, were some of the flashier-looking craft that caught the eye of potential customers here — some of which noted in 2013 that while the Kvichak boat was clearly capable, it also lacked the bling factor of the competitors.
"Styling is absolutely a challenge out here," Whittemore noted, acknowledging it wasn't a factor in designing the RBM. "This boat is styled for the mission. Maybe it's wrong, but we are not going to give up mission for flash."
The pilot boats for Duqm are the first RBM sales in the Middle East, but Whittemore expects more to come.
"You have to stay out here if you're going to operate here," he said. "We'll be here. We're going to sell boats."
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