WHY I LOVE ME, 29

Leaving Islesboro
Photo: Deb

I am finally tissue/cough drop/Sudafed-free so you won't have to wait another week for a Thursday WILM post - and this one is the Cat's meow.

Maine is home to bobcats, Maine Coon cats and feral cats. I hate cats. Little slinky sleeze balls that wrap themselves around your ankle then sink their claws into the fleshy part of your calves while climbing up to your face so they can scratch your eyes out. Wait. NutJob the dog does that. Still, dogs rule. Well, mountain lions rule too. Never mess with a mountain lion.

Though generally you cannot ride a cat, you can ride the Cat, a high-speed catamaran-style ferry departing from Portland, Maine or Bar Harbor, Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Conventional ferries take over 6 hours to make the crossing, but the Cat takes 2 hours and 30 minutes.



The Cat is currently the fastest large-capacity high-speed ferry in North America, and it's based right here in Maine for half a year. It has a cruising speed of 41 knots, that's 46 mph to you landlubbers. While on board you can gamble at the casinos, shop in the duty-free store, watch a movie in in the TV-movie lounge, get sloshed at the bar or woof food at the cafe. You can go on deck and get the hair sucked off your head if you want or you can sit on your butt inside and watch the waves go by from the big windows on the viewing deck.

The Cat can hold 940 passengers and 240 vehicles. The twin hulls are aluminum and connected by a bridging section with center bow structure at the forward end. Welding and glue hold it together. I'm sure they used Super Glue, not Elmer's, so don't worry. The Cat has life rafts, but so didn't the Titanic so you might want to throw a PFD in your tote bag.

The Cat is considered one of the world's superships and has been featured on the Discovery Channel and will soon be featured on Discovery's Modern Marvels series. The Cat was manufactured by Incat, a company out of Tasmania that makes catamaran-style ships. The real name of the Cat ferry is HSC INCAT 059, but that doesn't exactly roll off your tongue, so marketing wizards decided on calling it the Cat.



To ride the Cat, you board in Portland, Maine and go to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, or board in Bar Harbor, Maine and go to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The Cat is prohibited from traveling from Portland to Bar Harbor/Bar Harbor to Portland because of the Monkee Davy Jones Act, which prohibits a foreign flagged and/or built vessel from going from U.S. port to U.S. port.


The Cat was built in Tasmania, home port is Nassau, Bahamas (can you say "tax shelter"?) and in addition to blasting across the Gulf of Maine/Bay of Fundy in the summer, it heads south like the rest of the wusses do in the fall and runs between Trinidad and Tobago until spring, when it heads back to Maine.

So there ya go. One cool Cat right here in Maine that can go 46 mph across the Gulf of Maine.

Now do you love ME?

REFERENCES:
The Cat Ferry
Nova News Now
Wikipedia: INCAT