15 JULY 2026 Zech is a Bellingham native with nearly two decades of commercial and recreational marine experience, including managing a 28-vessel charter fleet in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A holder of a 500-ton U.S. Coast Guard Master’s License, he joined All American Ma- rine in 2023 and has helped secure marquee projects including fast electric ferries for San Francisco Bay Ferry and a research vessel for the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. DANIEL ZECH BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, ALL AMERICAN MARINE About the Author WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE INDUSTRY The passenger vessel sector has a capital problem that tra- ditional financing alone does not solve well. New vessel construction costs have moved sharply upward. Emissions expectations are tightening. Fleet age is not going down. Yards are busy, long-lead equipment is not getting easier to procure, and operators are being asked to make larger capital commitments earlier in the construction process. CCF reduces how much debt an operator needs, lowers the effective cost of the capital stack, and creates a funding runway that can be matched to a construction timeline. For operators weighing replacement tonnage, expansion vessels, alternative propulsion, or major reconstruction, that runway can decide whether a project stays conceptual or actually gets contracted. For builders like All American Marine, the downstream effect is direct. Operators with CCF capital are better po- sitioned to move from letter of intent to contract because they arrive with committed funding rather than condition- al intent. Conversations about options, propulsion choices, layout decisions, and lifecycle economics become more productive when the customer has already done the work of defining its capital plan. For any operator that has not explored CCF, the first step is simple. Talk to your CPA about what your eligi- ble income base looks like and what a five-year deposit cadence could produce, then contact MARAD’s Office of Marine Financing at marinefinancing@dot.gov or 202- 366-5737. The application costs nothing to file and can be submitted as a PDF. If you know you will need to re- place or expand tonnage in the next decade, the question worth asking is why you would fund that future vessel entirely with after-tax dollars and more debt than neces- sary. Given where construction costs are headed, inertia is expensive. PHOTO: ALL AMERICAN MARINE
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