Big Tow 2

 The fire damaged container ship MSC Sao Paulo V arrived in Halifax 2 as a dead ship in tow from Quebec City.

The Groupe Océan tugs tasked with the tow may not be familiar to Halifax, but are worth noting as previous visitors.

Océan Taïga is one of two 8,000 bhp, 110 tonne bollard pull Lloyd's Ice Class 1A Super F.S. arctic class tugs, with fire fighting capability (the other is Océan Tundra) built to work in the high arctic and as escort tugs on the St.Lawrence River. It was lead tug in towing the 53,324 gt ship.

Letting up the slack on the tow line, April 2.

Despite its Quebec City and Baffin Island work routine the tug has been in Halifax before. It stopped over here in 2018 en route to Jamaica to work temporarily in Groupe Océan's Kingston tug fleet. (Note the extra wires to secure the tire fenders for the ocean passage, and containers of spare gear on deck.)

The second tug in the MSC Sao Paulo V tow is Océan Raynald T., a typical 5,000 bhp Robert Allen design tug, built by East Isle Shipyard in Georgetown PE. Completed in 2009 it was originally the Stevns Iceflower (the second of the name) then Svitzer Nerthus from 2009 to 2017.

With its sister tug Svizer Njal (ex Stevns Icequeen and renamed Océan Clovis T. in 2017) it also visited Halifax before. The two tugs were brought to Canada in 2015 when Svitzer attempted to break into the tug business in Montreal. The venture was not a success and Groupe Océan acquired both tugs and assigned them to harbour duties in Quebec City.

Océan Raynald T. acted as tethered stern tug to provide steering during the tow from Quebec City. It cast off and its place was taken by the local tug Atlantic Bear off Halifax.

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