There is a growing fleet of them in British Columbia. They call them “Pusher tugs”.
They would appear to be well suited to protected waters of the inside passage.
I had the pleasure of being CE on the first Intercon Vessel. When she was done in the early 90’s they did not install it in one piece (Load Cell) as they do now. She was put together in little pieces which lead to a bunch of cracks, some of them in interesting places. Later I sailed on more modern Intercon rigs. We sailed thru some pretty shitty weather during Hurricane season and never had any problems.
The only problems that I had were caused by the 2nd mate. First time he pumped the system up to over 4,500 psi (Normal pressure was not to be over 2,200 psi. The second time we were running in a 10-15 foot sea and he retracted the pins rather than extend them while pumping the system up. Outside of that the only real failure that I ever had was when one of the bearings on the Bull Gear let go but we were able to keep sailing in the notch and were very lucky that the weather behaved and did not blow until we made Tampa.
IIRC, Intercon used to say the system has been tested in up to 30 foot seas in the GOM.
2 Likes
Folks in Bella Bella tend to disagree.
1 Like
Well, OK… how about with most of it?
2 Likes
One of the most asked questions when I’m on foreign vessels is: “ Why are all these tug boats around? “ Meaning not simple assist tugs.
The answer is manning loopholes.
No other country has this manning loophole. Thus no other country needs to have a distinction between a ‘ship’ and a tug and barge for manning reqs.
Many tugs and barges are used around the world. What is the manning scale of them? Any non US tug operators here that tow barges? What is the Tonnage of the barges you tow? Any Non US ATB operators that can elaborate about running equipment that did NOT originate in the US in your area of operation?
Looking around the world on marine traffic shows a lack of similar ATBs around the world. Wonder why.
Any vessel OVER 1600 tons must have an Unlimited tonnage Master and Mate to operate. How was it decided that the US tug fleet is so special that a barge (up to 9,999GT) is able to be pushed by tug with a less than 300 ton masters license!? It looks pretty stupid to the rest of the seafaring world.
5 Likes
Well… to be honest it’s pretty difficult to navigate that area whether on the wire, in the notch, ATB or a ship when you’re snoring…
1 Like
Not sure which incident you are referring to, but i suspect which one it may be.
From a guy who has sailed on both JAK and articouple, i will say that it can be REALLY easy to think you are properly pinned in and not be on an articouple boat. The wheelhouse monitor can give erroneous information, for example…the monitor can show full extension on the ‘r-pins’ when in fact the pin is not in the rack but butting up on the end of it. I am by no means saying this is what the cause of the jake shearer incident was (that will always be a mystery) but it is certainly a possible culprit.
Its real easy to be complacent and/or in a rush and overlook details that can bite you in the ass as we all know.
2 Likes
What? They let the mates run the coupling system on those units? If they ran them on the one I was on, we would have been ejected every week. . . .
2 Likes
If you’re referring to the Jake Shearer incident, weren’t they running in open water outside the IP?
As far as tanker ATB’s all the deck officers I know (I know many) state off the record that they do not come close to maintaining opa 90 hours because of the manning. They just take it as part of the job.
4 Likes
Yes, but I was talking about why companies like Western Towing are still building wire boats on the west coast. There are reasons to have them over ATBs.
1 Like
Those were the reasons I gave you. When your regular run is from a bay in California that can be towed in and out of and your destination is close to 3000nm getting in and out isn’t as much of a concern. Once at sea the vessel is very seaworthy and they are much cheaper to build. The nickels and dimes are the companies main concern. On the gulf and east coast of the US where you are in and out of port every other day being weather bound for a few days each time will lose you a contract in a hurry.
At Moran we shared the cooking duties on the ATB I was on even though the AB only had the duty to cook once a day it worked well for us we had a good crew and everyone could cook at least a few good meals
20 posts were split to a new topic: ATBs Licensing
I’ve seen a few tugs pushing so many barges they had a tug at the head of the tow to assist.
I was referring to the complete voyage from start to finish. Companies balk at paying for Pilots. Heck. I remember when we were going on a voyage and the master would ask the crew… ‘Hey, have any of you been to xxxx?’ If anyone had (including the cook) off we’d go and not get a pilot. My, how things have changed!
Which makes the self imposed <10,000 GT limit come into play. Some barges are over the limit and most employers make the crew obtain FCP to cut cost. But that is not the norm. This is why so many barges are 9,999 or less.
I was bringing up this strange loophole to inform that the US towing industry is relatively new license wise. Towing vessels were only required to have licensed operators in 1973. Prior to that if you worked on a less than 200GT tug you didn’t even need a license.
Two watch system. A read of Officers Competency Act of (holy crap) 1936 OCA’36 shows three watch system and 8 hour work days have been in force since 1936 for vessels over 1600 GT. How can it be a logical thought that a tug and barge of over 1600GT is somehow different? 3 watches (unless it’s on a towing vessel under 300GT). Oops, Under 200GT (on a voyage under 600nm). Oops. Under 100GT doesn’t apply. All to shed manning requirements. I don’t care what anyone says. 6 and 6 suck on extended trips.
This OCA was heavily manipulated by the towing industry in the late ‘50s and ‘60s.
1 Like
They needed those remote controlled rigs at the head of the tow. Flanking those narrow bends is a definite skill, Backing into the turn,those little bow pusher things made their tuff job a bit easier. But not easy in any sense of the word.
6 and 6 sucks. We were able to go 4 and 8 later on, but I copied a respected captain in our fleet and went 10-2…2 to 6, and 6-10 once we got the extra man(A converted “Barge Captain” to a 3rd mate instead of a rider) Yeah, a bit different, but worked for us. ABT’s helped with discharge. Still in port no matter what watch hours, we were all tired as hell upon sailing. The engineers, cook, and I loaded stores and supplies during loading and discharge. Made our rest up while underway. Wasn’t crazy about that, but that was what the criteria was for the job. No regrets.
1 Like
I’m not surprised at the hours that people put in on tugs and barges and this thread has added a lot to the little I knew of this side of shipping. Our coastal petroleum transport is two 36,000 dwt tankers that also transport bitumen in addition to avgas ,diesel and three different grades of gasoline and with the short distance between ports the mates days are pretty full on. Three years of wave data shows that the Southern Ocean has peak significant wave heigh greater than the North Atlantic and is normally sea state 5 but waves higher than 10 metres is common so judging from the comments about Hawaii we will be unlikely to see any ATB’s on the coast in New Zealand.
3 Likes