Position of crew room on traditional fishing boat

by Charles Roring in Manokwari of West Papua - Indonesia

Naval architects who design fishing boats frequently have to face many conflicting factors. Fishermen in Europe like to have a wide deck area to enable them to work freely during operation. The superstructure of fishing boat is therefore positioned by ship designers at the forward end of the boat. As a compromise, the rooms for the crews are positioned below the main deck next to the fish hold.

In the contrary, fishermen in Indonesia and Malaysia prefer to have crew rooms and their kitchen on the main deck. As a result the size of the superstructure is bigger and occupies more than sixty percent of the main deck area of the fishing boat. For instance, if the proposed design of LOA is 12 meters with the breadth of 3.6 meters then the deck area of the boat will be around twenty square meters.

A new approach has to be given to new fishing boat designs in Indonesia and Malaysia where working area for the fishermen on the main deck needs to be enlarged. For a traditional fishing boat with four crews, at least two beds for the crews have to be removed from the main deck to the lower deck whereas the kitchen can still be maintained as it has been a traditional custom for the fishermen in Indonesia to have wet kitchen. The new fishing boat design should have at least fifty percent working area for the fisherman to improve their working condition and to allow for more fishing equipment to be installed on the main deck.

In addition, wood which has been the traditional material for boat building in Indonesia can still be used with some introduction of Fiber Reinforced Plastics or FRP materials on the superstructure and joints of the watertight bulkheads that divide main body the fishing boat into engine room, fish hold and crew room.

It is hoped that the new approach on the design of the general arrangement of the fishing boat will improve the productivity of the traditional fishermen in Indonesia. Also read: Super-tanker and the risk of oil spill at sea and Designing Lines Plan with Fastship