Craig Trans for the Hammer

The abandoned tug Craig Trans will be sold "as is, where is" by Admiralty Marshal's auction on June 13. It arrived in Halifax December 18, 2012 and was detained for deficiencies. Its crew had run out of food and water and asked to be repatriated. Thanks to public subscription and the work of the Mission to Seafarers and the ITF they were flown home to Honduras.[see several previous posts]
The owner appeared in Halifax for a time, but he seems to have walked away. Liens against the vessel by agents and the Port Authority eventually triggered its arrest. The public sale notice appearing in today's newspaper states that the tug is "formerly flagged as a ship of Bolivia" indicating its certificates may have expired.
The tug was bound for Beauharnois, QC where the partially dismantled ship Kathryn Spirit awaited a tow to Mexico for scrap. With the tug's detention and the closing of the St. Lawrence Seaway on December 25, the ship languished all winter as an eyesore. With the opening of the Seaway again.and the coming of spring, there has been sign of another tug to do the tow.It now seems quite certain that it won't be by this tug.

Craig Trans - in the teeth of a gale (more to come)

1. As Craig Foss

The classic tug Craig Trans flying the flag of Bolivia, arrived this afternoon in the teeth of a gale. It anchored at first, but was unable to hold position, and so moved to pier 25 - where I hope to get a better picture.
Built in 1943 by Tampa Marine Corp for the US Army, it was one of the class of Large Tugs and was named LT 648.
The Army laid up the tug in 1960, and Foss Maritime of Seattle acquired in 1965. They rebuilt the tug at their own yard in 1966. They replaced the original single 1343 bhp Fairbanks-Morse with a pair of 2,000 bhp EMDs. Renaming it Craig Foss they sent it far and wide. First hauling lumber barges to Hawaii, and latterly running to Alaska, it made numerous long tows to the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela and got as far north as New Jersey on at least one trip.
Eventually in 2011 Foss said goodbye to the tug. Its first assignment for the new owners was to tow the ferry Queen of Saanich from Anvil Island, BC to Ensenada, MX for scrap last August. I don't have any details on its more recent movements however.
At this point my bet is that it is heading for St.John's to tow the cruise ship Lyubov Orlova to the Dominican Republic, instead of the woefully under powered Charlene Hunt featured in these pages a few weeks ago. [My bet was wrong - see updates]
That tug is still sitting in St.John's with plywood on its windows after encountering severe weather on its way past Halifax. I hear it had to be evacuated by some of its crew, and was brought in full of water by only its master and engineer.
Regrettably I fear that Craig Trans, despite its power and wonderful sea keeping abilities may be well past its prime too, so there may be little good news in this story.
More later.

2. As Craig Foss.