The new South Ferry vessel, Southern Cross, arrived at Shelter Island late Monday night.
The $3.5 million state-of-the-art vehicle and passenger ferry was built by Blount Boats Inc. of Warren, Rhode Island. South Ferry President Cliff Clark said it tied up at the South Ferry maintenance dock at 11:15PM Monday under the command of Chief Engineer Joe Clark, Maintenance Foreman Capt. Liam Schultz and Project Supervisor Capt. Michael Early.
The vessel is “ready to go and will be put into service over Memorial Day weekend,” Clark said.
Blount Boats signed a contract with South Ferry Company in 2018 to construct the steel passenger/vehicle ferry. The The 101- by 40-foot double-ended ferry was designed to carry a deck load of 260,000 pounds.
The new ferry is powered by two Caterpillar C-18 Tier 3- and IMO II-certified engines, each each rated at 470 HP at 1,800 RPM. Twin Disc MG-516 remote mount, reverse gears transmit power to four-blade, nibral ice strengthened propellers through four Aquamet 22 propeller shafts, according to a Blount Boats news release.
The Clark family has been providing transportation between Shelter Island and North Haven since the 1700s. The Southern Cross will be a sister ship to two other Blount-built ferries designed by DeJong & Lebet of Jacksonville, Florida for South Ferry — the Sunrise (Hull #311), delivered by the shipyard in 2002 and the Southside (Hull #323), delivered in 2009.
The Southern Cross brings to five the number of boats in service for South Ferry. That includes the Lt. Joe Theinert, which was formerly known as the Southern Cross but was rechristened in honor of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Joseph J. Theinert of Shelter Island, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2010. Joe had worked at South Ferry as a deckhand.
