OUTDOORS

New Florida Girl has a new mission

‘Twilight career for an old captain and an old boat’

Tina Harbuck
tharbuck@thedestinlog.com

The old girl’s not done yet.

The New Florida Girl, which has been a part of the Destin fishing fleet for four decades, has been renovated into a work horse of sorts.

Capt. Jim Westbrook, of the iconic fishing vessel that has taken thousands of folks fishing over the years, said that after the Coast Guard deemed the vessel too old to continue to carry passengers, he decided to turn it into a work boat.

“I think it’s the stoutest, strongest boat in the fleet, but I didn’t know how to prove it to them,” Westbrook said. “So we decided to change it into a strong, long-lasting work boat. And that’s what we’ve done."

The New Florida Girl, which is now part of Deploy-Able Inc., is in the marine construction business, artificial reef deployment business and the post-hurricane and storms business.

“We have built something that is completely capable of doing it,” Westbrook said.

To look at the bow of the New Florida Girl, it looks the same. However, the back deck has been cleared and now holds a hydraulic crane able to lift debris, chicken coops or other materials used to make artificial fishing reefs.

“She’s still the good ole 90 feet by 23 feet that it’s always been. It’s just lighter on her feet after we took all that house off,” he said.

The boat now floats about 3 inches higher out of the water.

“The crane weighs a lot, but not near what we took off. It’s about 3 tons lighter than it was … a big difference,” he said.

The New Florida Girl will be able to deploy as many as 32 chicken coops, stacked two high, which can make 16 reefs for fish replenishment.

Plus the vessel will still have all “the old comforts of the boat up in the cabin with a coffee pot on and a bulletproof glass between the reefs and your family it you want to come along and watch,” he said.

Westbrook also has plans to add two state rooms down below with hot showers and air conditioning, so the vessel can be used as a standby vessel if needed.

“We’re making it so we can do a little subcontracting for the government,” he said, as well as a little camping in the bay and hunting for cypress logs.

The crane is able to reach down 25 feet and pull something off the bottom.

“It’s got a dead lift of 3 tons straight up … it’s pretty stout,” Westbrook said. “It’s going to up the ante in the reef deployment world. We’ll be able to haul reefs out that nobody has been able to do. It has a lot of opportunities.”

The vessel will be able to carry approximately 20 tons of cargo or debris on the 1,000-square foot deck.

The New Florida Girl, which docks behind AJ’s Seafood and Oyster Bar on Destin harbor, has already been put to work.

Just recently, she pulled three pilings out of the harbor near AJ’s and is lined up to haul out coops in a couple of weeks.

“Those pilings didn’t even put a strain on it,” said Dave Janowski, who is captain and crane operator aboard the New Florida Girl. “It’s going to be exciting. We’re going to be able to do a lot with that thing for sure,” said Janowski, who’s been in the reef deployment business for seven years.

Westbrook and Janowski have been working on the revamping of the New Florida Girl since Labor Day

“This is the most excited I’ve been about a project since I bought the American Spirit in late ’05. This is par with that if not more exciting,” Westbrook said. “It’s just a twilight career for an old captain and an old boat and we’re having fun with it.

“We’re reinventing the wheel. They said the wheel was the greatest invention, but it was really hydraulics, they just didn’t know it back then.”