Winner: 13th Annual International Student Design Competition

Success on a plate, Ferry safety, TNA May/June 2026

Designing a passenger ferry for the River Niger means confronting a particular set of constraints: variable water depth as shallow as 0.89m, shifting channels, water hyacinth overgrowth, subsurface wrecks and piracy on the Lokoja–Onitsha route.

The winning entry in the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association’s (WFSA) 13th Annual International Student Design Competition For Safe Affordable Ferries addressed all of them, and did so with a hull form and construction method chosen specifically to be buildable by a Nigerian shipyard.

Team Nagapasa, winners of the Safe Affordable Ferries competition (image: Universitas Indonesia)

First prize went to Nagapasa, a 10-member team from Universitas Indonesia led by Felicia Rachel Taruli Siregar, who also oversaw the ferry’s structural arrangement. Their design, MV Safarind, is a 36m flat-bottomed steel catamaran with a service speed of 27knots, capable of carrying 200 passengers and their cargo on each leg of the 200km route in approximately four hours.

The competition asks university teams to develop safe, affordable ferry concepts for inland and coastal routes in developing countries, where ageing vessels, overcrowding and poorly designed hulls frequently cause accidents and loss of life. Nigeria has provided the backdrop for the third year running, attracting 18 submissions in the 2025-2026 competition. Click here for the complete story.

Winner: 12th Annual International Student Design Competition

‘Naija Spirit’ wins WFSA contest for a safe Lagos ferry

By Martin Conway, The Royal Institution of Naval Architects, June 12, 2025

The 12th WFSA student design contest saw the association return to Nigeria, with David Okafor, a naval architect with the Nigerian Navy, again assisting in drawing up the specifications for the design teams. This year’s challenge called for a 200-pax electric ferry capable of navigating Lagos’ waterways, emphasising a 25km route linking Ikorodu, a northeastern business zone, to the CMS transport hub on Lagos Island.

This year’s winning entry was Naija Spirit, a 28m, double-deck aluminium catamaran, designed by Team Black Pearl of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Team Black Pearl was captained by final-year student Md. Safayet Hossain Shishir – who, incidentally, was part of the BUET team that secured second-place in last year’s WFSA River Niger design competition. Click here for the complete story.

Location:

Waterfront Museum, Red Hook, Brooklyn

Topics:

Excellent Electric Vessels and their Infrastructure:

• Battery-run electric vehicles on board: Safety considerations
• Worsening weather and what to do
• International Ideas and Opportunities:
• Nigeria – New fleet of electric ferries in Lagos
• Philippines – Expansion intraurban Manila ferry route
• Bangladesh – New interurban ferry
• India – Kolkata expansion, including waterborne Amazon package delivery

Confirmed Speakers:

• Captain John Garvey, COO Staten Island Ferry 
  
• Buckley McAllister, CEO McAllister Towing including  Bridgeport - Port Jefferson Ferry
• Elias Van Sickle, CEO, SWITCH, Hydrogen fuel cell ferries coming to NYC
• Yasuyoshi Tarao, NK Japan, Safe Carriage BEV on Ferries Report
• Ed Schwarz, Siemens Marine Energy Solutions
• Dr. Joe Sienkiewicz, Meteorologist and Oceanographer
• Alan Warren, NY Waterway — The Blue Highway
• Ilana Mayid-Dennis, US Coastal
• Matt Periconne, Sixth Borough

LIVE MUSIC! New Yeller, an Indie Rock Band

Sponsorship opportunities available: Contact Roberta Weisbrod, ferrysafety -at- gmail.com.

Safe Affordable Ferry Design Competition, 2024

11th Annual International Student Design Competition

The goal of the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association is to reduce ferry fatalities. The objective of the International Student Design competition is to reduce ferry fatalities by designing safe affordable vessels.

For the past ten years, awards of $10,000 annually have been made to student teams, with the top prize each year being $5000. An impressive roster of internationally recognized maritime professionals act as judges. Awardees have been recognized at international maritime conferences and through media reports.

In the preceding years' competitions, teams were asked to design:

• a passenger ferry for the Bangladesh river system
• an inter-island RoPax for Papua New Guinea
• an inter-island RoPax for Indonesia
• a passenger ferry for Bangkok
• a passenger ferry for the Singapore Straits between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
• a passenger ferry for the Pasig River of Manila
• a RoPax for the Winam Gulf region of Lake Victoria in Kenya
• a RoPax for the Amazon River in Brazil
• a RoPax for the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India
• an electric ferry for the Pasig River of Manila.

The 2023-2024 Design Competition for a Safe Affordable Ferry was focused on designing a RoPax ferry for the Niger River in Nigeria.

For questions, contact Dr. Roberta Weisbrod, executive director of the World wide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA), at ferrysafety -@- gmail.com.