Tide and Current

Pushing To Alaska

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Tugs have been towing barges to Alaska for most of the past century. Time has seen the evolution from steam to diesel and wooden to steel construction. But always they have towed. It has been the accepted practice on a coast where waters range from long protected straits like Grenville Channel to some dangerously open waters like Dixon Entrance. On the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts there has been a tradition of pushing that got a boost with the advent of articulated tug-barge systems that locked the tug into a deep notch in the stern of the barge. Initially it was said that the open Pacific waters would be too rough for such systems but by the mid-1990s a number of innovative west coast operators began testing these assumptions. A small Vancouver, British Columbia company, Island Tug and Barge, who at the time operate a fleet of four tugs, was one of these. In 1996 they took the well-known tug Island Monarch gave her a complete overhaul and put her to work on their Vancouver to Skagway Alaska run pushing a 267X60-foot tank barge.

With 28 feet of the 136-foot tug locked into the notch on the stern of the fuel barge, the rig worked well but was improved still further with the installation couplers that use hydraulic rams out the side of the tug to lock the boat in the barge notch. The most obvious change when a conventional tug is converted to a pushing tug is the addition of a second wheelhouse mounted on legs set high above the original wheelhouse. This allows the operator to see over the barge that is now in front of the tug.

Built in 1966, the Island Monarch reflects an era when Canadian tugs wore a lot of their owner’s pride right along with the company colours. The current owners have come out of that tradition and have added some contemporary touches. Crew accommodations are roomy, clean and quiet, in the wheelhouse the owners have installed a full suite of electronics including a powerful program for electronic charts with a global positioning link which has become standard on most modern tugs. With its GPS link, the computer brings up the appropriate chart as the boat moves from one to the next. All the while the boat is displayed as a small red hull shape. “I have to remember,” says Captain Ric Swanson, “That it is only a chart and that I have to keep track on the radar as well.”

When I rode the boat on an overnight trip to Vancouver Island Ric explained that on the 800 mile route to Skagway Alaska there are several pieces of water open to the Pacific as well as others like, Cape Mudge, where winds and tides can create difficult seas. “If we push up to Cape Mudge then we go on pushing up through Seymour Narrows and Johnstone Straits,” says Ric, “But we don’t push across Queen Charlotte Sound (30 miles of open water between the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the shelter of Calvert Island).”

While there are times when the big long Pacific ground swells roll into the Sound in a manner that would not present any difficulty for the pusher tug, Ric prefers to take a cautious approach. “It would be too big a gamble,” he says, “You can’t ask another tug for a weather check because they are all towing and so have no real reference for us. Ric figures the boat gains about a half-knot pushing over towing. On the nine-day trip north that half-knot, even if it is made for only a part of the way, can make a real difference.

For Captain Swanson, an important factor is the much greater ease in handling the coupled unit of tug and barge. In British Columbia tow-line-landings are the norm while in Washington State the tugs tend to make-up alongside their barge for close maneouvers. In either case there are difficulties with visibility from the wheelhouse out to all corners of the barge and there is also a time factor. With the coupled unit Ric is able to see from the upper wheelhouse down both sides of his barge. This gives greater safety to the crew working the mooring lines at the same time as allowing the barge to be set and swung more easily. As on many such dedicated tug-barge units, a bow thruster has been installed on the barge that can be worked by remote from the wheelhouse of the tug.

An incidental bonus to the top wheelhouse comes when working in Alaska. “Winter outflow winds can make Lynn Canal to Skagway pretty snotty,” says Swanson, “We get a lot of icing on the lower wheelhouse but on the upper house we only get a little icing from the spray.”

Unlike the shovel bows of some of the big container barges, the Island Monarch’s fuel barge has a fairly pointed bow for speed in travelling through the water. But this also tends to make the barge more difficult to turn so that it will shear off the tug’s course when transiting the narrow confines and abrupt turns of 20-mile long Wrangell Narrows. The tide floods from both ends of the Narrows so Ric tries to enter one end on the last of the flood so that he is exiting the other end on the beginning of the ebb. “There is four or five knots of tide in there,” says Ric, “The flat bottom container barges will swing more easily than our 16-foot draft loaded fuel barge. So we always push through the Narrows when loaded. Empty, the barge draws only a couple of feet so we can tow it through on a short line with about 50 feet between our stern and the barge’s bow.”

Tankerman Terry Watson is pleased with the pusher arrangement as it allows him to pass easily from the tug to the barge when travelling. “To slow the tug and fall back alongside a towed barge for me to get aboard takes 15 minutes on each end,” he explains, “That can cause us to miss a tide in Seymour Narrows. On the Alaska trip I do a lot of maintenance on the barge pump engines and save on shipyard time.”