skiff

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Size:
  9.2 meters long

• Type:
  Cargo skiff

• Manufacturer:
  Ubrikkian

• 

From the Movies

Surface utility vehicles used for the transport of passengers and cargo, skiffs are simple repulsorlift platforms that float about on antigravity fields. Jabba the Hutt used 9.2-meter long cargo skiffs as companion craft to his massive sail barge. A single pilot stands at a tiller's position at the rear of the skiff and guides the vehicle by manipulating two dish-shaped steering vanes on each side of the craft. To assist in cargo handling, the skiff features loading planks and a powerful electromagnet for lifting heavy loads aboard.

From the Expanded Universe

Jabba employed a small fleet of Ubrikkian Bantha-II cargo skiffs, named after the hardy work beasts found throughout the galaxy. These flatbed vehicles could carry over 100 tons of cargo. Their robust repulsorlift field generators can lift a fully loaded skiff up to 50 meters off the ground, and provide a surprisingly swift top speed of 250 kilometers per hour. Since the skiffs aren't very maneuverable, and their fully loaded inertia makes them difficult to control, very few pilots would dare push a skiff that fast.

Skiffs are often pressed into passenger duty, especially on poor frontier worlds that can't afford better-suited vehicles. Almost anyone can learn to pilot a skiff, and the vehicles are often controlled by labor droids.

Behind the Scenes

The initial concept art for the transport skiff was not a repulsorlift vehicle at all -- early designs had immense flying whales with strapped-on passenger modules serving as transportation. When that direction was abandoned, the skiffs were first envisioned as more archaic in design, with sweeping prows and flowing sails. The design was gradually refined to make the skiffs less nautical and more utilitarian.

Like its larger sail barge cousin, the desert skiff was built as both a full-sized prop and as a miniature for effects work. The main miniature used for full motion shots was 81 centimeters long, and was filled with poseable puppets of the characters aboard.

The full-size skiffs were built of fiberglass atop steel undercarriages. The skiffs were held aloft by two steel I-beams in the sands of Yuma, Arizona for filming. The cameras were strategically positioned so that the shadows cast by the skiffs obscured the support rig. The full-size skiff was also used for bluescreen photography of traveling close-up shots of the cargo vehicles.