Challenger Class Research Vessels
Roger Long Marine Architecture, Inc.
The University of New Hampshire gave me an opportunity in 1991 to test some
theories about the suitability of planing hulls for oceanographic research. Conventional wisdom at the time held
that doubling the speed of small research vessels would require significant sacrifices in on-station handling and
motion. I believed that the poor low speed characteristics of fast hulls were the result of designers attempting
to wring the last increment of performance out of vessels judged primarily by their top speed.
The "Gulf Challenger" proved that giving up only a small percentage of the maximum speed, along with
careful attention to other hull characteristics, could produce a vessel whose comfort and handling were comparable
or even superior to vessels designed to operate at half the speed. She has now given UNH nearly a decade of service
and I have been gratified to hear more than once the phrase, "The best thought out boat I was ever on..".
These vessels can do serious work. The A-frame capacity of the ODU vessel is 8,500 pounds and the vessel has the
stability to handle weights of this magnitude. The "Gulf Challenger" has deployed 70 foot long, 4000
pound spar moorings. I received a letter from a buoy researcher who had deployed the same gear from the "Gulf
Challenger" and from a vessel four times the displacement and thirty five feet longer. He told me that the
smaller, faster, vessel was a better working platform for deployment and retrieval.
Old Dominion University built an enlarged and improved version of the vessel, the "R/V Fay Slover", which
went into service in October 2002. The "R/V Tioga, the same hull stretched to 60 feet in length, went into
service for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in April 2004. With 50, 55, and 60 foot versions of this
hull delivered and in service, the "Challenger" type is becoming the standard for the small inshore research
vessel.