Their designs afloat across nation

STAYING AFLOAT: Naval-architecture and marine-engineering firm Bristol Harbor Group is finding opportunity in the cargo, transportation and energy sectors. Pictured above are Bristol Harbor President Greg Beers, left, and Vice President Cory Wood. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
STAYING AFLOAT: Naval-architecture and marine-engineering firm Bristol Harbor Group is finding opportunity in the cargo, transportation and energy sectors. Pictured above are Bristol Harbor President Greg Beers, left, and Vice President Cory Wood. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

With the pleasure-craft market as depressed as it is now, two college students parading around Manhattan in tuxedos may not be able to convince anyone they are successful luxury-yacht designers like Gregory Beers and Cory Wood did in 1993.
Back then, such a story seemed plausible to the two University of Michigan students visiting a New York City naval-architecture conference, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
“We pulled up to the clubs in a limousine and they whisked us right in,” Beers recalled. “We had quite an evening and on the plane ride home we thought maybe we should try it for real. That’s what made us think we could do it.”
Nearly two decades later, the tall tale Beers and Wood cooked up to get beyond the velvet rope is at least partly reality, even if they don’t spend much time in limos.
Bristol Harbor Group, the company Beers and Wood founded along with fellow naval architect Andrew Tyska right after that trip to New York, now carries on Rhode Island’s storied ship-design tradition in an evolving way.
Now plying waters from Narragansett Bay to Alaska’s North Slope, the firm’s designs include runabouts, high-speed ferries, oil-tank barges, tugboats, Coast Guard cutters, paddle-wheel tour boats and construction-staging barges.
To survive the recession, which eviscerated the recreational boat market, Bristol Harbor is focusing on the commercial and industrial markets, where cargo, transportation and the energy sector are opening up opportunities.
“We are pretty pessimistic on the pleasure-boat market; it was decimated in the recession,” Wood said. “I was at the [Norwalk, Conn.], boat show in 2008 when Wall Street crashed. You could have shot a cannon through there and not hit anyone. It was like someone turned the spigot off.”
In 2009, Bristol Harbor joined with a Texas designer to open an office outside Houston focusing on vessels serving the oil, gas and inland-cargo markets, which have been much more resilient than the recreational sector.
Last year, Bristol Harbor Group sold Bristol Harbor Boats, its small-boat construction division, to Maritime Marine in Maine, which is now producing and selling the 19- and 21-foot center-console boats that used to be made in Rhode Island.
Bristol Harbor’s founders were drawn to Rhode Island because of its boat-building tradition, but now many of the vessels the firm is designing are much more at home on the Gulf of Mexico or a Midwestern river than the Atlantic. “Right now we believe there is a lot of pent-up opportunity in the oil and gas sector,” Beers said. “People think of the giant oil rigs, but we specialize in the ships and barges that take equipment out there and service them.”
The Houston-area subsidiary, led by architect Ed Shearer and home to five of the firm’s 15 employees, is central to Bristol Harbor’s long-term strategy and developing a few of the new designs the company is most excited about.
One is adapting river-cargo barges to use Z-drive propulsion systems, which are rotatable out-board-like propeller systems that operate without rudders. Z-drives have been used for years in the ocean, but seldom in rivers because of durability concerns.
Another major design project Bristol Harbor is working on is converting commercial vessels from using diesel fuel to liquefied natural gas.
As the price of natural gas has declined over the last several years, the efficiency and cleaner emissions of natural gas have become more attractive.
A big challenge on ships has been finding space for the large, cylindrical natural gas tanks, which are more difficult to integrate into the hull than diesel tanks.
Another issue, similar to some of the challenges facing electric cars, is the scarcity of refueling stations, so natural gas ships are now more likely to be short-run ferries or tour boats that frequently return to their own fuel source.
One high-profile ferry system that has been investigating making the switch is New York City’s Staten Island ferry, Beers said.
Another unglamorous market Bristol Harbor has found demand in is the staging barges used in the construction of highway bridges.
Looking at the consolidation of maritime businesses over the last five years, Bristol Harbor’s founders are glad to have survived.
But they said it is disappointing to see the Rhode Island maritime industry so much smaller than it used to be.
“We came out here because Rhode Island was the center of the industry,” Wood said. “There were tons of designers and now there are only a few. It’s something the state of Rhode Island needs to recognize as a strength.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Bristol Harbor Group
OWNERS: Gregory Beers, Cory Wood and Andrew Tyska
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Naval architecture and marine engineering
LOCATION: 103 Poppasquash Road,
Bristol
EMPLOYEES: 15
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1995
ANNUAL SALES: NA

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