Orange Shipbuilding Tackles Multiple Projects For Corps Of Engineers, Navy

Orange Shipbuilding recently won a contract to build the Mister Pat, an 83-ft. (25.3-m) pushboat from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) district in Tulsa, Okla. The vessel will be used to provide maintenance support for the Arkansas River Navigation System. This vessel will push other floating plants to assist in setting stoplogs in tainter-gated dams, routine watering and dewatering of locks and dams, removal of debris from lock approaches, and minor clam shell operations in the navigational channel. The contract was awarded on the basis of the greatest overall value of the bid, rather than for the lowest bid. Corning Townsend (CT) Marine of Rowayton, Conn, was chosen to design the vessel — and Thomas Clary, Orange Shipbuilding's president, feels that the hull offered by the design played a large part in its winning the contract.

Other Corps of Engineers contracts Orange Shipbuilding is working on include: • Two 59-ft. (18-m) towboats, which are being built for the COE Rock Island District — one for operation out of Pleasantville, Iowa, and the other out of Peoria, 111.

• One 75-ft. (22.9-m) towboat being built for the St. Louis, Mo. COE district, which will feature kort nozzles.

Other projects Orange Shipbuilding is working on include: • Twenty-two YCs, or deck barges, for the Naval Sea Systems Command. In 1993, Orange completed a contract for 26 YCs for the Navy. • Two YONs, or multi-fuel barges, for the Naval Sea Systems Command. These are the first double-skin tank barges the Navy has built; Orange built seven single-skin YON barges for the Navy in 1993.

• Six LSQ/Cs, or rapid deployment portable bridge sections for military deployments from ship to beach heads.

This is an R & D project contract in conjunction with partner Brown & Root.

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