Smit Panther heads for home
Smit Panther, the first example of Damen’ s new ASD Tug 3213 design, is en route to its homeport of Rotterdam. The tug is one of a series of four powerful terminal tugs ordered by Smit and constructed at the Damen Hai Pong shipyard in Vietnam.
Designed to meet demands for a more powerful shiphandling and escort vessel, the ASD 3213 embodies many well established features present in existing successful Damen ASD tugs but also incorporates lessons learned from the MARINT ‘SafeTug’ project to which Damen and Smit subscribed.
This first vessel of the four tug series carries the Lloyds Register of Shipping class notations; 100A1 Escort Tug (+) LMC, UMS, FiFi 1 with waterspray.
Smit Panther measures 32.14m in length overall, with a beam of 13.29m and draft aft of 6.43m. Two Caterpillar C280-8/MC main engines develop a total of 7,268 bhp to drive a pair of Rolls Royce US 285 fully azimuthing propulsion units incorporating controllable pitch propellers. On trials the tug achieved a bollard pull towing ahead of 94.7 tons and 88.9 tons pulling astern. Maximum free running speeds of 14.3 knots ahead and an impressive14 knots astern were also recorded.
The tug left Vietnam in June and will sail to the Netherlands under its own power via Singapore and Cape Town, arriving in late July. It is hoped that a more detailed account of this new vessel will be possible at a later date.
An order for four tugs of the same ASD 3213 design has been awarded to Damen by the Lamnalco Group, with delivery scheduled for late 2010. Also included in the order is one Damen Stan Tug 1606 and five Pushycat 1204 line handling boats.
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