Gemini workboats was started by Andrew Craig who worked as a commercial fisherman for 20 years, during this time he clocked up 40,000 hrs at sea working mainly in the Thames Estuary and Southern North Sea, he worked on and owned various mono hull vessels between 8-16 metres but found their performance left much to be desired when in bad weather.  Stability and carrying capacity were poor and deck space was very limited.

Andrew thought there had to be a better way and started looking into catamaran designs, unfortunately there was nothing on the market that met his requirements, over the next few years he had to compromise and had a 12m steel cat built followed by 2 GRP cats, although these vessels were an improvement on mono hulls and had plenty of deck space they still didn’t meet all his requirements as the carrying capacity was poor and they slammed when heading into heavy weather.

Andrew eventually had to come ashore on doctors orders after having a back operation and decided to  design a cat that was more suitable for commercial use and tackle the slamming problem all cats suffer with.

Using his vast experience Andrew started designing a displacement type catamaran,  together with a well established navel architect, and combining practical and technical experience, came up with the world famous G10 design. The problems Andrew had suffered on his own cats had been resolved by using a sensible hull width and  by the use of various types of Gemini designed anti pitch foils for heading into poor weather.

(We should point out at this stage that no matter what sales pitch you are given about superior hull designs etc, all cats suffer with slamming when heading into heavy weather unless there is some form of dampener fitted) Gemini are still the only cat builders in the UK that address the slamming problem and we have eliminated it on all our vessels.

Gemini workboats is now a thriving business and is by far the biggest GRP cat builder in Europe. Gemini chose not to undertake repair or refit work unless its on one of our vessels, we have never had a mono hulled vessel in our yards and all of our 30 staff are dedicated to the production of catamarans which is why our delivery dates are realistic.

The G10 full displacement design is by far the biggest and strongest GRP cat on the market in its class, which suits the heavy-duty industry, and is capable of carrying very high deck payloads.

The new semi displacement fast cat range has two different build specs to suit clients requirements, light and heavy duty (which is 1.5 ton heaver), both vessels are designed to suit their intended workloads, and are built as light as a semi-displacement cat in this class can be before compromising structural integrity.

As an example of the fast cats performance we recently launched a 10m fast cat (heavy duty) fitted with 2 x 225hp John Deere engines, this vessel was fully fitted out, had a 2 ton slave hauler fitted, full fuel tanks, and achieved a top speed of 23 knots.