The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) maintains a fleet of Cape-class motor lifeboats based on a motor lifeboat design used by the United States Coast Guard. In September 2009 the CCG announced plans to add five new lifeboats, bringing the total number of Cape-class lifeboats to 36. The vessels are staffed by a crew of four, two of whom are rescue specialists. In spite of its name, the CCGS ''Cape Roger'' is a larger patrol vessel, not a Cape-class lifeboat. The CCG also maintains some larger motor lifeboats based on Arun-class lifeboats designed in the United Kingdom. In 2021 a contract was awarded to Ocean Pacific Marine to upgrade the class over a 7 year period.

Design

Cape-class motor lifeboats have displacements of , total lengths of and beams of . Constructed from marine-grade aluminium, ships have draughts of . They contain two Caterpillar 3196 diesel engines providing a combined . They have two four-blade propellers, and each ship's complement is four crew members and five passengers. The lifeboats have maximum speeds of and cruising speeds of . Cape-class lifeboats have fuel capacities of and ranges of when cruising. They are capable of operating at wind speeds of and wave heights of . They can tow ships with displacements of up to and can withstand winds and -high breaking waves. Communication options include Raytheon 152 HF-SSB and Motorola Spectra 9000 VHF50W radios, and a Raytheon RAY 430 loudhailer system. The lifeboats also support the Simrad TD-L1550 VHF-FM

radio direction finder Direction finding (DF), or radio direction finding (RDF), isin accordance with International Telecommunication Union (ITU)defined as radio location that uses the reception of radio waves to determine the direction in which a radio station ...

. Raytheon provides a number of other electronic systems for the lifeboats, including the RAYCHART 620, the ST 30 heading indicator and ST 50 depth indicator, the NAV 398

global positioning system The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

, a RAYPILOT 650 autopilot system, and either the R41X AN or SPS-69 radar systems.

Class list and distribution

Design

Class list and distribution

References

External links