Brian Fournier News

<p>Fifteen to 20 tugboats, the maritime 18-wheelers that normally dock ships and push barges, will roar down the Hudson River Sunday morning, September 5, as they vie to be named the fastest boat in their class. The race typically draws thousands of spectators, which is one of the reasons the tug companies enjoy participating. <br /> <br /> &ldquo;New Yorkers sometimes forget they are surrounded by water and that there is a whole maritime industry working here. This tug competition is the one time a year people can really see what we do,&rdquo; said Craig Rising of McAllister Towing and Transportation, one of the largest and oldest tug companies in the country. It is also a field day for the tug crews, many of whom bring their families aboard.

We rolled into town on the last train north, arriving Portland, Maine at 2:00 a.m. Half an hour later we were at the dock, hauling our kit - and when Marine News travels light, we're like Hannibal crossing the Alps - over silent tugs resting abreast: Captain Bill, Justine McAllister, Stamford. On the phone a few days before, Capt. Brian Fournier had said something about leaving a light in Stamford's forward port cabin, and there, finally, it shone. But something brighter had caught our eye, and could we believe it? Last time we saw something like it, it was in Aberdeen, Scotland. Now, from Stamford's starboard rail, it loomed and glistened four hundred feet away - rising nearly as high - a pair of deep-sea drilling platforms, afloat waters barely up to their ankles.

It's been a rough year for tugmeets. Charleston, Boston, and Portland, whose Musters we've covered in the past, were respectively, skipped, canceled, and postponed. The World Ship Society tells us they'll be back next year with the Boston event, and the Portland muster, pre-empted by Hurricane Charlie, is taking place as this is written. We wish we could have gone north. While there are all sorts of good reasons to attend a tugmatch, we, being media people, think mostly about the good press they bring the business. The way things are shaping-up in such realms as national security, the price of fuel, environmental cleanliness and such, waterborne transport displays more and more advantage for the good of all.

When was the last time 15 ocean ships docked almost all at once in New York, and undocked again, and sometimes redocked in-between, all in a week? In the near-400 years since the Dutch first arrived, there have been events even larger. But not many of them lately. Lately, large get-togethers of harbor craft in the most visible parts of the port - upper bay and lower North River - usually surround festive celebrations like the Tug Races and their accompanying games, great entertainment for young and old. But more stirring to watch than tugs at play are tugs at work. Barges go up and down the rivers regularly, but shipdocking, the lively part of tugboating, is concealed from the public eye off the remote corners of Staten Island and the containerports of Newark Bay.

There was a tense moment at the Boston Tug Muster, held this year on the last day of May. At 10 A.M. sharp, the official opening moment of this 19th annual event, there were no tugs at the rallying point, Pier 4, Charlestown. At 10:05, still no tugs. By 10:10, only Innovator, possibly the shortest tug in town, had cruised by. It passed along the pier as if looking for old friends, and finding none, performed its trademark about-face and seemed to be departing. Maybe the gents aboard had got the date wrong? Last year's Muster, after all, was in August. On the pier itself, among Muster officials, a nasty question was starting to form: What if you gave a Muster, and nobody came?

He loved Maritime Reporter so much that he failed a class project for it. Yes, it's true that when he was an eighth grader in Boston, Brian Fournier sadly realized that he received an "F" on a book report that he had written on MR for his English class. Fournier didn't receive his failing grade for his lack of knowledge on the subject or for "lying his way through the assignment" as his teacher thought. He did everything he was supposed to do - he read the material thoroughly sometimes six or seven times over, he had the basis of the industry down pat and he chose something that he was interested in. It was only until he realized that his "book" did not suit the task at hand.