Strait Raven and barge

 The small tug Strait Raven arrived in Halifax from Sydney late August 30 with the McKeil Marine barge MM143 and tied up at the Cherubini dock in Eisner's Cove. Although a small barge at 542 gross tons, it has a clear deck area on hull dimensions of 43.90 x 16.46m, so can carry a significant size load. Cherubini Metal Works specializes large metal fabrications such as the bridges recently completed for Toronto.

Strait Raven was  built by its owners, Superport Marine Services of Port Hawksbury, NS in 2013 and is a twin screw 1,000 hp vessel, also equipped with a bow thruster.

A very useful vessel, it has carried out tows throughout the region, between Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

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Scrap tow from Halifax

This morning two surplus navy barges were towed out for scrapping to shipbreakers in Sydney, NS. Because the barges are not over large, they did not require large tugs. Also, possibly in order to economize on pilotage fees, the tow was organized in elephant style, so that only one pilot was required.


Lead tug was Strait Raven, operated by Superport Marine Services Ltd of Port Hawksbury.  A 455 bhp twin screw vessel, it was built by Superport at their own yard in 2013.

It was towing the barge YRG-60, a fueling barge used in the naval dockyard.. It in turn was connected by towline to YDG-2 a degaussing barge.

 At the end of the procession was the McKeil Marine tug Dover Spirit, with a line to its bow.

I saw Dover Spirit in Quebec during the summer ( see Tugfax August 29 ) for the first time under its new name. It was previously called Kaliutik when it was built in 1998 by Dovercraft Marine. It is a two screw 550 bhp tug.


I did note that YDG-2 was towing stern first, so I suspect that when the tow reaches the harbour limits Dover Spirit will take over the tow of YDG-2 alone.

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New tugs, new names

Newly launched for Superport Marine of Port Hawksbury is the tug/workboat Strait Raven It was launched February 14 at the owner's own shipyard but has not been registered yet. It is reported to be heading for Newfoundland on contracted work.

Also new is Groupe Océan's latest ASD tug. Océan Pierre Julien was registered in Quebec City on February 22. The 204 gross tons, 3,000 kw tug is the latest in a series of small powerful harbour tugs built by the company's Industrie Océan yard in Ile-aux-Coudres, QC. It is expected to go into service in the spring, possibly in Montreal. The shipyard has now started work on the TundRA class escort tug.

Back under Canadian flag for the second time in as many years, but this time with a another new name is Atlantic Tern. When acquired by Atlantic Towing last year for support work it was given the very odd name Atlantic Birch II . It was almost immediately transferred to Barbados flag but was re-registered in St.John's February 26, 2013 with the much better name Atlantic Tern.
Built in 1975 as Canmar Supplier II, it was later Suppplier II, REM Supporter and Thor Supplier.
Atlantic Towing follows a naming policy of using tree names for its tugs and bird names for its suppliers. The old  tug Atlantic Birch has been laid up in Saint John for many years, and is not the same vessel as this one.