Who is building new coastwise tugs?
Lots of new harbor tugs have been built, and are being built. A very significant modernization and renewal of the harbor tug fleet with ASD Z-Drive tractor tugs now being the expected standard.
However, it seems like most of the coastwise tug fleet is still 30-50 years old, with only a few new tugs joining the fleet.
Western Towboat has building their own for Seattle to Alaska routes on the regular for a long time but I moved away from Seattle and haven’t been keeping an eye out for recent builds.
Young Brothers’ four Kapena boats, Foss’s three Arctic class boats, Mt Baker, Mt Drum, Sigrid Dunlap, Montana, Hawaii, are the ones that come to mind in roughly the past ten years, with the caveat I know nothing about the East Coast or the GOM.
Western builds nice boats. However, it’s less than one boat a year, and it’s a fleet expansion, not an old boat replacement.
Western also has a few old, but restored to like new condition and updated to modern standards boats. They are very good at that too.
Western has the best maintained tugboat fleet.
Companies are buying old and repowering. You wont see many new boats until regulation forces it. The main reason Western is able to do it is because they do it all themselves. Solid business model, their new dry dock was a smart play.
I’m thinking tugs are so much “simpler” than other ships, a tough hull, a big diesel, living quarters for the crew, and not much more. Buitl to push or pull anything they can get their bow against or a towline onto. Since you are a “tugsailor” feel free to correct any wrong assumptions on my part.
I have seen many new wire boats builds since vane stoped building 2017 ish