TOWLINES

Svitzer UK has closed down their associate company Humber Tugs Limited with effect from 31 December 2008. Following a detailed review of Svitzer operations on the Humber the company concluded that a high quality and reliable service to all of Svitzer’s customers can be provided from the Svitzer Humber operations based in Immingham and Hull.

Dutch tug owners W Bouwman Marine Service BV has sold the single screw tug Indus to the Marine and Towage Services Group (MTS) in the UK. The tug is well known in the marine civil engineering industry and will be renamed MTS Indus. Built in 1964, Indus is 25.36m in length and during its life time has been re-engined and upgraded several times. The vessel is currently powered by a Caterpillar 3512 CHD diesel of 1,775 bhp and is equipped with a single screw, Kort nozzle and three rudders.

Macduff Ship Design Ltd, currently the purveyors of an increasing number of successful tug and workboat designs, has moved into a new office building. The address and contact details are as follows: Macduff Ship Design Ltd. Low Shore, Macduff, Aberdeenshire AB44 1RE, Scotland, UK. Telephone and fax numbers are unchanged but managing director Donald Cameron has the new Email address: donald@macduffshipdesign.com.

TP Towage Ltd of Gibraltar has sold the tug Mumbles to Resistência – Serviços À Navegação, Lda of Setubal, a member of the Lutamar Group. Mumbles was originally built in 1969 for use at Swansea by the Alexandra Towing Company Ltd, transferred to Gibraltar in 1995, and was handed over to TP Towage Ltd by successors Howard Smith in 1998. The vessel is a single screw tug with a bollard pull of 40 tons, powered by a Ruston main engine of 2,190 bhp. The sale follows the purchase of the Voith tractor Wellington (formerly Smit Canada ex, Canada) in March of 2008.

The salvage tug Fotiy Krylov, from Russia’s Pacific Fleet, arrived on station in the Gulf of Aden in early January as part of a naval task force, led by the missile destroyer Admiral Vinogradov, to protect shipping against attack and hijacking by Somali pirates. Fotiy Kylov is one of the most powerful tugs in the world that until recently was on charter to towage and salvage specialists Tsavliris.

Smit International is transferring the Voith tractor tug Smit Trafalgar from the UK Liverpool fleet to serve a new contract in Taiwan. It joins another tractor tug, the former Union 9, from Smit subsidiary URS in Belgium that has already been redeployed to the Far East and renamed Sky 401. Smit Trafalgar is one of a series of similar tractor tugs originally built as the Trafalgar in 1998 for the Alexandra Towing Company Ltd by McTay Marine at Bromborough. The tug was one of the most powerful vessels of the series, with Ruston machinery of 5,600bhp and a bollard pull of 63 tons.

The ASD tug Stevns Iceflower has been sold by Partenrederiet Stevns Multi Ship to Canadian interests. Stevns Iceflower, and sister ship Stevns Icecap had been on time charter to Svitzer for one year, operating as the Svitzer Njord and Svitzer Nanna respectively. The latter remains with Svitzer under a new bareboat charter. Both tugs were built in 2006 by Irving Shipbuilding Co at East Isle Shipyard, Georgetown (Maritime Journal – Oct 2006). Two leading Latvian towing companies, PKL Ltd. and Ostas Flote Ltd. (Latvia), have joined forces to improve their position in the towage market.

From January 2009 the new company PKL Flote Ltd offers towing services at the port of Riga with four tugs and the port of Ventspils with another four. The PKL Group of companies has a total of 18 vessels, a dozen of which are of recent construction and design. There is close cooperation in the Baltic ports between the Latvian towing companies and their Estonian, Russian and Finnish colleagues.