This new rescue airboat, built by Midwest Rescue Airboats, is being commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard. Midwest Rescue Airboats is a Lawrence company that has a contract to build seven airboats for the Coast Guard in 2009 and another 28 in the next five years.

A group of investors recently inspected a new rescue airboat built by Midwest Rescue Airboats in Lawrence.

When Cathy Cain orders parts for the Midwest Rescue Airboat company she and her husband own, she often gets the same response.

“They say, ‘You’re building what? Where?'” Cathy said. “We get that a lot.

“People associate airboats with Florida, Louisiana and Texas. They can’t believe we’re building airboats in Kansas.”

That’s just one of the misconceptions Cain and her husband, Matt, have fought as they sought to market their rescue boats with reinforced aluminum, polymer-coated hulls, closed decks and cabins. Matt said the company also had to overcome the image of airboats that prowl the Everglades and wetlands of the South, which were basically modified open-decked john boats.

“I don’t consider we have competition, because everybody else builds pleasure boats,” Matt said. “We just want to build rescue airboats for the government or fire departments.”

Their rescue boats have been changing perceptions since 2006, when the Cains entered one in a Coast Guard-sponsored demonstration on Michigan’s Saginaw River. That led to an order from a Michigan fire department.

“The boat performed flawlessly,” Matt said. “At the same time, Homeland Security starting searching for the next generation of rescue craft.”

That search and the performance of the fire department airboat resulted late last year in a contract to build seven airboats for the Coast Guard in 2009 and another 28 in the next five years. I.J. Ezeonwuka of the U.S. Coast Guard contracting office said the total value of the contract was $9.4 million.

The first of seven boats to be built this year recently shipped.

“I can’t wait to test it,” said Joe Hutto, who with fellow Coast Guard retiree Lloyd Wherry is sub-contracting to install sophisticated electronics in the airboats. “I was a Coast Guard captain, but I didn’t pilot airboats. I’ve ridden on airboats, but I’ve never seen one with a steering wheel or a cabin.

“But it’s a very practical application. They should have had these at Katrina.”

Icy work

Although the airboats, which can be shipped in a container to wherever they are needed, may someday help in hurricane rescue, they are being built for ice rescue on the Great Lakes. The reinforced aluminum 22-foot-long hulls can break through ice and withstand the pressure as broken ice “channels” against the side. Enclosed decks will keep them afloat in 4-foot waves with the crew of seven comfortable in an enclosed cabin sitting on air-suspension chairs Hutto and Wherry also will install.

When not crashing through the ice, the airboats can skim over frozen lakes, snow, mud or even wet vegetation, Matt said. The 525-horsepower motor can push the airboat through open water to a rescue site up to 10 miles offshore at a top speed of 40 to 50 mph.

‘Something unique’

The airboats are the result of a lifetime spent on the water and boat building.

Matt grew up on the Kansas River in North Lawrence in a family devoted to fishing, boating and other water sports. As a young adult, he moved to Virginia, where he worked in the shipyards building aircraft carriers and submarines. After the Cains returned to Kansas in 1991, he started building airboats for use on the Kansas River. Eventually, he started making aluminum boats for his own use and for commercial customers.

When showing the commercial boats at shows with his personal airboat with its enclosed cabin in tow, people told him he should build boats like it for emergency crews.

“That’s when I realized we had something unique,” he said.

With that encouragement, Matt and Cathy started building commercial airboats out of a shop in De Soto, ultimately moving to East 23rd Street in Lawrence.

On a recent tour of the Cains’ plant, Ryan Lorentz, a commercial loan officer for Kaw Valley State Bank in Topeka said he didn’t realize how elaborate the boats were.

“When you think of airboats you think of three people on seats with a control stick,” he said. “It’s kind of unique to have somebody building an airboat in Kansas. They are pretty creative people.”

Scooting along

With the needed equipment in place, the Cains started building the first Coast Guard boat in mid-January.

The Coast Guard contract allows the company 120 days to deliver a boat with the next boat due 18 days later, Matt said. But the Coast Guard later amended the schedule for the first boat in the contract, he said.

“The Coast Guard upped the schedule 30 days,” Matt said. “They wanted to put it into use while there was still ice on the lake.

“They really make us scoot along. Cathy and I had to work a lot of 16- or 18-hour days.”

The couple also learned there were more regulations and documentation required of the Coast Guard boats.

“The fire departments rely on us to know what we use,” Cathy said. “The government wants everything documented.

“If three years down the road the hull fails, we have to be able to find where the metal came from.”

The Cains have orders for three fire department rescue craft this year in addition to the seven Coast Guard airboats. To accommodate their growing production, they have expanded their 4,000-square-foot shop by taking over 3,000 square feet next door for warehouse space.

The Cains expect more orders. They are fielding inquiries from multiple departments along the Great Lakes, the U.S. Border Patrol and the British Coast Guard, and Matt is considering modifying the current Coast Guard design to fit other needs.

“I want to take the same boat we have here and put jet drives on it to go after what the Coast Guard calls shallow-water boats,” Matt said. “This platform would work very good for that.”