BOAT OF PREY: Predator takes its first official tour for White Island Tours on September 20. Able to carry 50 people, the boat has the highest capacity of the tour company’s fleet.
Photo Louis Klaassen D4278-11
WHITE Island Tours has prepared for what it expects will be a busy tourist season by buying a fourth boat.
Their largest boat, the catamaran Predator, officially began running tours earlier this week after an extensive refit, White Island Tours marketing manager Patrick O’Sullivan said.
“We did some quite major work actually. Complete refit on the inside, all new seating, new railing around the outside, repainted by Haddocks, new sign writing and we also added a hydraulic structure on the rear of the vessel that lifts our inflatable out of the water.
“Predator did her first trip on Tuesday. That was great to get her out there.
“We had Peejay IV too, so that day we had quite a few people booked as we’re starting to get busier,” he said.
The new boat is expected to arrive in Tauranga next week. The boat, also a catamaran, is rated to carry 38 people.
Mr O’Sullivan said when combined with Predator, and PeeJay IV, the three-boat fleet could potentially carry up to 274 people daily if they each made two trips.
“I don’t think we will reach that on most days but there is certainly potential in the first weeks of January,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
Though it was unlikely the company’s fourth boat, the catamaran Moutohora, would be used to go to White Island, it could carry another 50 people with two daily trips.
He said this summer the business would have a greater capacity than prior to the sinking of PeeJay V in January, after it burned to the waterline.
“It gives us a good capacity boost above what we had even with PeeJay V, so that’s quite exciting for us. We’re expecting a good summer passenger numbers-wise, providing of course the weather plays ball with us,” he said.
Despite the purchase of two boats since the PeeJay V was lost, Mr O’Sullivan said they had not ruled out the possibility of having another purpose-built boat in the future.
“At the moment we’re still considering options. We’ve put a lot of investment into [Predator] – there simply wasn’t another vessel in the country, or even Australia, that would have been suitable to get us through the summer.
“We’re going to assess how it performs over the summer and decide if this is the right vessel for us moving forward or whether we want to go ahead and build something of our own down the track,” he said.
The new boat would require some refitting when it arrived in Whakatane.
“That’s a slightly smaller boat; we’ll probably add some seating as it has no external seating at the moment.
“We’re going to provide it with a name once it has arrived. It’s only three years old. We need to make it our own [with] a bit of sign writing,” he said.
Boat capacity
- PeeJay IV – 49
- Predator – 50
- New boat – 38
- Moutohora catamaran
30 to Motuhora
25 to White Island