New boats for Ika

IKA Corporation Limited has taken delivery of two new pole-and-line fishing vessels, built at the Government Shipyard in Suva. Ika’s general manager, Penisoni Usumaki, and shipyard manager Apenisa Naigulevu, signed the handover documents last month, before the vessels were received with traditional ceremonies at the Ika base in Lami.

The 28.65-metre vessels, Ika 9 and Ika

10, have a beam of 8.4 metres and a draft of 2.95 metres. They have a freez er capacity of 45 tonnes each, 430 horse power engines, and can accommodate 28 crew. The two boats costs F|3.4 million to build. Usumaki said the boats were the first stage of Ika Corporation Li mited’s expansion and development plans.

“IKa 9 and Ika 10 greatly increase our skipjack tuna fishing capacity,” he said.

“We will now be able to follow the tuna north during the cooler months, thus ex tending the fishing season and increas ing our catch.”

Ika Corporation Limited, corporatised

on January 1 this year, supplies skipjack tuna to the Pacific Fishing Company at Levuka. The corporation has long-term plans to expand its operations to include

long-line and purse-seine fishing.

The designer of the new vessels, Colin Dunlop, says IKa 9 and Ika 10 are ideally suited to Fiji conditions: “They are the most advanced boats in the Ika fleet we’ve learnt from experience of the other Ika boats and eliminated those drawbacks they have more horsepow er and are more stable,” he says.

“These new boats are an improvement on an original idea.”

Over the past 20 years, Dunlop, 54, has built some 50 boats and the products of his drawing board are scattered all over the Pacific: a cargo ship in Papua New Guinea, a pilot boat for Tahiti, a ferry for Kiribati, fishing boats for Ton ga, a tug for Pago Pago, a yacht for Australia, a mission boat for Tokelau, a

self-propelled barge for Rarotonga and

cruise vessels, tugs, barges and fishing boats for Fiji. His current project is de signing a 54-metre cruise vessel.

Originally from Scotland,

Dunlop settled

in Australia where he stu died naval architecture at the Royal Mel bourne Insti tute of Tech

nology, before

joining the

drawing office

of the William stown Dock yard in Mel bourne.

He came to Fiji in 1970 to work for Industrial Marine Engineering Limited (IMEL), then Millers Ltd, before setting up Colin C Dunlop and Associates. He works closely with his assistant, John Naceba, who attended a mechanical en gineering course at the Fiji Institute of

Technology.

Ika 9 will be skippered by Ika’s fleet

superintendent, Captain Navitalai Vola

vola, who has been with the corporation since 1978. Captain Jona Kubukawa, who has been captaining Ika boats for 10 years, is master of Ika 10. “Fijians make the best fishermen in the world,” he says. “They are born fishermen. With the new boats, we will be better and fas ter and I think we’ll catch a lot more fish with them.”

Kubukawa, 41, learnt fishing from the Japanese, whom he joined as a 16-year-

Kubukawa.

old to ply the oceans south of New Zea land, north of Hawaii and in Solomon Islands waters. He is originally from the southern island of Kadavu. He attended Kadavu Provincial School before the sea lured him to a career he loves. Kubuka wa has had some hair-raising moments.

He remembers one of these moments: “When Hurricane Bebe struck (in 1972) we were 120 miles south of Kada vu and the rough seas broke portholes and windows. We drifted for nearly a week before cruising back to Levuka. We were lucky we had plenty of food and

water and 100 tonnes of fish.”

But his wife and four children mean more to him than all the fish in the world. Shore leave means going home to 'Kinoya in Suva or to Kadavu, which is also his wife’s home, to oversee his kava plantation. □

New boat: Ika 9 and designer Colin Dunlop.