Tug silliness in Halifax Harbour

To promote Irving Shipbuilding, two Atlantic Towing tugs conducted a demonstration in Halifax to kick off Ocean Week.
Atlantic Oak and Atlantic Willow did some pirouettes, crash stops, spins and push offs. All good fun.
1. Atlantic Willow does a high speed spin.

2. Atlantic Oak, full speed astern.......

3. Then a crash stop in her own length.

4. Oak and Willow meet for a push off.

5. Oak does a spin.

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Canadian built tugs - for the history books?

Atlantic Fir and Atlantic Larch were tasked with unberthing the container ship Arsos this afternoon. Fleetmates Atlantic Oak and Willow were berthing Fidelio at Autoport at the same time. All four tugs were built in Canada by Irving Shipbuilding for Atlantic Towing. Both companies are owned by the Irving group, and so one would expect that they might cross-pollinate to an extent.

However other Canadian tug owners ( including Groupe Océan, which also builds smaller tugs for itself at its own yard) among others, have also had tugs built by Irving at its Eastisle facility in Georgetown PEI. The yard has also built numerous tugs for export-all from the same basic Robert Allan Ltd design.

However with the recent announcement that the 25% duty on foreign built ships has finally been dropped, the yard may be in for some stiff competition. Please note the tarif reduction does not (yet) apply to tugs.

Seaspan, the large west coast tug operator, which is part of the Washington Marine group - which also owns very capable shipyards, has just placed an order for four tugs in Turkey. Granted Turkey has a very fine reputation for building Canadian designed tugs, (Robert Allan Ltd of Vancouver is the premier tug designer in the world), but building tugs in Turkey for Vancouver would be even more attractive without duties and foreign yards would certainly be more competitive for Canadian orders in the future.

For more on this topic see Shipfax.

Newest Stevns tug

Stevns Breaker arrived early this morning fresh from East Isle Shipyard in Prince Edward Island. The tugs is the latest in a series built for Nordane Shipping of Denmark. After trials over the next few days, the tug will head off across the Atlantic.

The tug is a near sister to several tugs built by Irving Shipbuilding for the same owner. After a period of charter work all of the tugs have been sold on to other owners.

Her name is a little different from her predecessors, that had names like Iceflower, Icequeen and Icecap. This time the "ice" is dropped, because strictly speaking she is not an icebreaker. She is however ice capable.

She went right into trials with a run to Bedford Basin in the morning, then returning to pier 23 in the afternoon for bollard pull trials.

Update: Following Friday's trials, the tug was due to enter the Scotiadock II floating drydock in Halifax Shipyard for survey on Saturday morning. As the tug entered the dock, the dock continued to sink uncontrollably, and came to rest on the bottom. Fortunately the tug was not secured in the dock, and it was able to exit without damage.

A major salvage operation will be needed to raise the drydock, so Stevns Breaker may be in port a bit longer than planned.

Events surrounding the salavage of the drydock will covered in Shipfax.