Portsmouth Boatbuilder Has Global Reach

In an area renowned for its sailing and marine traditions, Naiad Inflatables of Newport, located at the New England Boatworks on Lagoon Road, maintains a distinctly local, and global, niche.

The privately owned company manufactures U.S. Coast Guard, police, military and recreational vessels based on customized, rigid hull inflatable boat designs.

A rigid hull inflatable boat (RIHB) is a lightweight, high-performance and high-capacity vessel constructed with a solid shaped hull and flexible tubes at the gunwale. The inflatable collar allows the boat to maintain buoyancy even if large quantities of water become shipped aboard during bad seas.

The cushioned ride and predictable handling make RHIBs easy to drive while maintaining excellent speed, particularly in rough conditions. The fully welded structure ensures optimum strength, enabling the hulls to withstand impacts with rocky shorelines and crushing swells.

Ranging in size from 2.5 meters to 24 meters, Naiad vessels are now used by governments around the world for customs surveillance, fisheries protection, maritime police, in addition to military and coast guard operations.

Naiad RHIBs are also used for fishing and tourism, and as tenders for yachts and yacht associations.

Academy Award-winning Director James Cameron selected Naiad to construct three custom designed research vessels to assist in the deepwater exploration of the Titanic. While Naiad of Newport is an American independently owned and operated small business, Naiad Design Ltd. of New Zealand, which has been designing RHIBs for the New Zealand and Australian Coast Guards for over 25 years, is the principle designer. Naiad is currently working with the U.S. Navy developing 7.0 and 11.0-meter unmanned vessels, and has built special forces vessels for the New Zealand Army and Australian Navy.

Naiad Inflatables of Newport, which previously delivered two 10-meter patrol boats to the United States Marine Corps for deployment in Iraq, is in the midst of delivering and commissioning 10 vessels it designed and manufactured for the U.S. Department of State. The boats will be operated by the maritime police in the Philippines and Indonesia to help combat illegal trafficking and fishing, and to strengthen security off their respective coasts.

"The U.S. field officers involved on site in the Philippines and Indonesia visited us multiple times during the design process and early stages of construction," said Steve Connett, president of Naiad of Newport. "We are incredibly proud of the result and count these vessels among the finest we have ever constructed."

The $3.6 million contract resulted in dozens of jobs directly and indirectly employed by Naiad, including 18 local businesses that supplied materials, equipment and personnel culled from Rhode Island's highly skilled maritime workforce.

As Ambassador David T. Johnson, assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, stated in a speech given at Naiad's New England Boatworks facility in May, "Today we take note of a particularly timely and poignant example of how the U.S. government's global reach can be traced back to its roots in local communities like Portsmouth, Rhode Island."