Towlines

In a freak accident, the Captain of the Kiel based tug Bülk suffered a badly injured arm when the towline parted while the tug assisted a ship in the Holtenau lock on the Kiel Canal. When the line broke one end snaked back aboard, smashed the wheelhouse window and damaged several pieces of equipment inside. The tug master was taken to hospital for further medical treatment and the tug was taken out of service. The cargo ship involved, Sound Future, continued on its voyage to Klaipeda

Dutch based International Transport Contractors (ITC) has sold its well known anchor handling tugs Tempest and Typhoon. The sister ships have an interesting history, being built originally for Bureau Wijsmuller of Ijmuiden in 1976 by Scheepswerf Van der Giessen in the Netherlands. They were very advanced for the time, being true ancho rhandlers of 47.75m LOA, powered by Werkspoor 6TM410 4SA main engines of 9,350bhp driving twin CP propellers for a bollard pull of 120 tonnes and speed of 14.5 knots. In 1991 they were transferred to Smitwijs Scheepsholding BV and purchased by ITC in 2005. Both tugs have been sold to the Indus Shipping and Trading Corp of Panama and renamed Indus and Gudri respectively.

US tugowners Crowley Maritime has taken delivery of the Ocean Wind, the second of four new Ocean class tugs from Bollinger Shipyards of Amelia, Louisiana. Ocean Wind joined its sister ship Ocean Wave (MJ – September 2012) in the Port of New Orleans on Thursday, 25 October, where they were formally christened. The 44.4m, 10,880hp deepsea tugs will be followed by Ocean Sky and Ocean Sun, the slightly longer DP-2 equipped members of the class in 2013.