There are ‘niches’ in every market. Some companies only deal with clean oil. Others are exclusive to black oil. And others do a mix of both. (both conventional and ATB barges.)
The ATB concept is as modern as it will get (at least in my lifetime) in the domestic market for speed, low crew size (cost) and cargo transfer rates. I know my current slab discharges at up to 10k/hr, three products. That’s 30K/ hour! Of course the rate doesn’t last as head is drawn down but initial pump rates are staggering. My particular company doesn’t handle ANY dirty oil. Not one barge has heaters or COW or IG.
20 years ago Maritrans/OSG made a business decision to sell off all barges below 180Kbbl. They made an observation that the Barrel/Mile profit on less than 180K wasn’t ‘worth it’. However several companies have prospered in the less than category. Some customers only want 25,50,75,100K bbl lots delivered. There’s more than one customer as well as one method of delivery that is considered in delivery options.
Strangely some customers don’t seem to care about going weatherbound, or speed. Cheap is the watchword.
I was on a charter with a major. We always got the safety up the ass drills. hardhats, flame retardant coveralls, gloves, glasses. While at the main terminal I watched a small time local 8K self propeller come in (who was on long term charter as well) the tankerman was in Flip flops, shorts and no shirt. And the same dockman who had reported one of my guys the previous trip for no safety glasses was chatting and laughing with this other guy. So, there is more afoot than just ‘the way we do it’ or ‘the way they do it’. Its about daily rate, charter class, insurance history, customer to customer relations. There’s LOT of sheiit involved that we are not aware of behind closed doors.
The Tug/Barge idea started as a result of the US overloaded crew compliment requirements for tankers (post ww2)
In the post war era a ‘large’ coastwise tanker (30K bbls) was required to have a 25 to 29 man crew! Industry was digging for a way to reduce manning. The CG relented in the 60’s and allowed reduced manning (down to 20 to 25 man).
That wasn’t good enough for industry profits.
So the concept of a tug and barge was developed. Tugs typically had 10 man crew, barge had 4 man crew.
That wasn’t low enough for industry profit.
Skipping the Union busting era, Atbs now run from 80K to 180K bbl barges with 7 to 9 man crew. Some companies do have slightly larger crews but I am not sure of which ones. The tugs are almost without exception under 300GT. Most are under 200GT Some are even under 100GT!. So limited tonnage licenses are all that is necessary to operate a tug pushing an ‘unlimited tonnage’ petroleum barge. Most of the barges are between 3000GT and 9999GT. I don’t know of ANY ships from anywhere in the world that runs comparable size crews.
The ‘Replacement’ for your barge was the El Faro……… In the stellar condition that fine craft was held to its no wonder there are ANY old(er) container ships left!
This part of the world is around New Zealand and Australia which includes the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea. We have two bar harbours on the West Coast of the South Island where inland there is some of the finest coking coal in the world. There is some fine YouTube videos of vessels entering. They tried with a 10,000 tonne barge and tug to haul the coal to Australia. Nobody knew the ETA of the tug within a month. The crew thought they were living in a washing machine and because the tug had to transfer bunkers of the barge I was never tempted.
We run a capt, 3-4 mates, 3-4 ABs( 2 of which are Tankerman), A Chief, 2 assistants and a cook. Capable of dirty or clean oil. Mates are the PIC and tankerman are assistants during cargo ops. The AB tankerman maintain the barge while at seas. Can usually run anywhere up to 20 foot seas before we call it for anchor time.
Never sailed on one of these but it seems like having to “de-couple” and change to a wire tow when the sea state gets bad enough to warrant it would suck big time.
I agree with you 100% on that part but where the ATB kills the wire boat is in places like the gulf where towing a large oil barge in and out of the Miss River, Bolivar Roads, Corpus Christi, Pascagoula etc just isn’t possible. You will spend days weather bound waiting on a window just to get out to sea and even then your sea speed is slower than the ATB. At least in the Northeast you can tow in and out of Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, NY Harbor, Buzzards Bay etc but I don’t think it’s safer than an ATB in those same ports. Towing to Hawaii you have more time at sea to make it feasible. On the east coast it makes more sense to run ATBs and that’s what the customers want.
Most purpose built ATB’s don’t even have a tow winch. They are built to handle pretty sporty seas but you have to keep an eye on the weather and plan accordingly. If you get ejected from the notch on one of these boats you have to take an emergency hawser from the barge and haul it onboard with a capstan and make it off to the H bits with a wire pennant. At least that is how our emergency towing gear is set up. I’m not sure what others who don’t have a winch have as emergency gear plans.
The early ATB intercon units were not purpose built, they were conversions of high horsepower (Back in the day) and large tonnage barges. A tow winch was on the original ones, but most were never used again. The good thing about it , never had to transition from push to tow on a wire. Bad thing, If you had to, how many of the next generation wheelhouse guys would know what to do safely. If perhaps you lose hydraulics to the system, can be a very long day. Although it hasn’t happened as far as I know, you never know until it does.
Well, I’m not about to retire or anything. I’m only 40 but I spent most of my career towing astern on the wire. The ATBs are much safer in my opinion. There is a loophole in the Towing Officer Assessment Record that allows someone to get a TOAR without getting to towing astern portions of the record signed off. Basically it limits you to running ATBs which sounds good in theory until you get ejected and get a crash course in towing. They say experience is something you get right after you just needed it…
Towing on wire out here by conventional boats is the norm. We’ve had ATB’s of various types come thru. Kirby even sent a mainland guy out here to assess running an ATB inter isle.
Nope!
In his estimation (he was a experienced ATB guy) it was too damn rough.
Too bad. Towing here between islands is as rough as anywhere. Amazing they don’t lose more barges than we do. But when it’s rough, you throttle back a little more, call the office, tell em you’re gonna be late.
ATB’s have their place. Good concept. But like everything else in our industry, bean counting management has ruined many aspects of it all.
Most significantly across all types of tug barge combos and types, crew size (too small) is asinine. While working at Sause they had dedicated tankermen (2) do all work on load/discharge on barge. Tug crew did nothing other than tie up/let go and adjust lines during cargo. THAT was a good system.
My last 24 years I sailed was 17 pushing and towing notch bulk and tank barges. The last 7 was an ATB new-build and operation. My experience was with the 50 inch Intercon system. On the east coast, the early systems worked well. On the west coast, the longer swells was a new ballgame. Early on, there was pin and bushing damage. After improved lubricants and more grease points in the system, it worked very well. They changed over to Orkot bushings after I retired. On going improvements every yard period. We weathered some pretty nasty storms. I have no qualms about sailing to Hawaii on the 50s if properly maintained.
The capts I sailed with were wire boat guys, some of the best. I slept well with them in charge if we had to break out on the hawser. Some of the guys I saw coming up getting their ATB TOARs…not so much.
I’ve always marveled the articulated design as I’ve only been onboard an ITB with three-point rigid coupling. Are there any other operational etc. advantages in “more than zero degrees of freedom” i.e. non-rigid connection than more relaxed crewing etc. regulations?
Having sailed on one of the early iterations of ATBs, I can say that we never “de-coupled” intentionally. In fact, in the years that I sailed on that one (with the dreaded Bludworth System) there were only two ejections, and I was only onboard for one of them. That said, even the Bludworth System, well maintained, is, for the most part, much better than towing on the string. . .