Ytb News

Sarter Marine Towing Company Inc. announced it has agreed upon definitive terms for the sale of Sarter to The Great Lakes Towing Company.Under the deal, The Great Lakes Towing Company purchased Sarter tugboats Donald J. Sarter and William C. Selvik, as well as all supporting machinery and equipment and most other shoreside assets. The remaining five tugs in Sarter’s fleet will be chartered to the Towing Company under a long-term bareboat charter arrangement. The acquisition closed on March 23, 2022.Great Lakes has retained all Sarter Marine employees and will supplement the business with administrative and financial support to help support and enhance Sarter’s current book of towing business in the region.Last fall…

The Great Lakes Towing Company said it is expanding its harbor towing and ice breaking services to Sturgeon Bay, Wis.The Towing Company has undertaken a fleet renewal program that began with the laying of 10 keels in August 2016. Since that time, the company has added five new Damen Stan 1907 ICE design tugs to its fleet, with the sixth new tug being delivered next month, and the seventh in Spring 2022.There will now be two Towing Company tugs stationed in Sturgeon Bay full-time, including a former Navy YTB.

Austal USA christened Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF-13) USNS Apalachicola at its shipyard in Mobile over the weekend.Austal has delivered 12 EPFs since December 2012, and USNS Apalachicola is slated for delivery in the summer of 2022.The Honorable Kelly Loeffler, ship sponsor of USNS Apalachicola, performed the ceremonial bottle break over the bow of the ship, the 13th EPF designed and constructed by Austal USA and the second U.S. Navy ship to be named after the Florida coast city.

Built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes, Wash., the first of the U.S. Navy's new fleet of six YT 808-class tugs was delivered in October after completing the last construction phase. Measuring 90 feet long and 38 feet 3 inches wide, the YT 808 vessel is powered by twin Cat 3512E marine engines, each rated at 1,810 horsepower. The engines drive two Schottel SRP 340 fixed-pitch z-drive thrusters providing a top speed of 12.5 knots and an expected bollard pull of 40 metric tons.The new series of Robert Allan Ltd.-designed tugs are the Navy's first vessels built to meet the U.S.

The U.S. Navy’s first Yard Tug (YT) 808 class tug recently delivered to Naval Base Kitsap, Bremerton Annex. Only 17 days after delivery, YT 808 was in the water assisting USNS Richard Byrd (T-AKE 4) as it moved away from the dock at Naval Magazine Indian Island.“Narrowing the gap between delivery and providing operational support is a priority for our team,” said Mike Kosar, program manager of Support Ships, Boats, and Craft Program Office within Program Executive Office Ships (PEO Ships).

The newest Freedom-variant littoral combat ship, the future USS Marinette (LCS 25) was launched into the Menominee River on Saturday.Named for the city in which it is being built, Marinette will become only the second Navy ship named in the city’s honor and the first commissioned ship. The first Marinette (YTB-79), a Natick-class large harbor tug, entered service in 1967 and operated in the Fifth Naval District headquartered in Norfolk, Via.The littoral combat ship (LCS) class consists of the Freedom variant and Independence variant, designed and built by two industry teams.

The Great Lakes Towing Company said it has repositioned its Tug Huron to Duluth, Minn. on Monday, January 2, 2017 to enhance capabilities for icebreaking, harbor assist and other services essential to commercial shipping in the Duluth-Superior region. The Tug Huron’s first icebreaking operation of 2017 took place late Wednesday evening, January 4 when she assisted longstanding customer, Canada Steamship Lines M/V Thunder Bay in the Port of Duluth. In addition to Huron, the Towing Company’s harbor fleet in Duluth now includes to Tugs Arkansas…

Unconventionally lowering costs, safely and improving the bottom line. That’s the Victaulic way. In the towing segment of the marine industry, sometimes it does seem that boats are under perpetual repair. A tugboat that’s tied up in maintenance and not able to work is a lost revenue opportunity. As a result, limiting time out of service by performing repair and retrofit services dockside is of critical importance. For example, McAllister Towing & Transportation was able to accomplish repairs not just quickly, but at a lower cost and in a safer manner than conventional methods.

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.

Large harbor tug Opelika (YTB 798) and Kittanning (YTB 787) follow alongside the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) as she gets underway on board Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka. U.S. The U.S. Navy large harbor tugs seem to have all but disappeared from most U.S. ports over the last decade. But in a few ports around the world the Navy-owned and operated tug endures as the backbone of port operations. Fleet Activities Yokosuka happens to be one of the naval bases on which the legacy of the large harbor tug continues to influence not only the operations of the port, but the Sailors that work aboard these perennial workhorses of the Navy.

A tugmeet is bound to be a local event, as harbor extravaganzas go. For starters, how far do we expect people to drive boats, just for the chance to strut? Okay, hundreds of miles if they could, but the cost of fuel and time off from business are both to be reckoned with. Even when they do arrive from afar, local conditions define the event. In Boston, for example, a tugboat race would not be advised. It's truly a crowd-pleaser when a field of tugs, a dozen abreast, tears up the waters like a raging winter storm. But it's environmentally unfriendly on Boston's confined waters, and anyway, a race is not such a true measure of a tug. Tugs are built more for power than speed. At the Boston Tug Muster on August 17, it was the push-off, the head-to-head contest, that measured you up.

"Tug boat sinks, spills diesel fuel" declared the headline in the Local section of the newspaper. And, strictly speaking, the headline was correct. In 1906, The Captain Morgan had been built as a tug. But as the fourth paragraph acknowledged, "The owner was having the boat ... refurbished into a house boat." So would it be more correct, technically speaking, to say "House boat sinks?" It may be a subtle distinction, but subtleties are why people buy newspapers. Houseboaters and pleasure boaters in general, some might imagine, leave no waterborne pollutants in Charleston harbor, while commercial vessels and oil spills were practically synonymous by November 9. And potentially scandalous.