99 February 20, 2000

Tug Repower on the Chesapeake

The St. Laurent Forest Products Corporation of West Point Virginia has been operating a pair of 84-foot tugs, the "Elis" and the "Sture", since 1980 when they were built in Houma Louisiana. The boats are dedicated to supplying the companies pulp mill with chips as well as towing the company's oil barge as required. When the original two-cycle main engines started showing their twenty years, Marine Superintendent Tommy Callis began shopping for replacement engines for the"Elis". He liked what he heard from engine dealer Sonny Hawkins of Inland Equipment about Cummins Marine and he had already had good dealings with distributor Cummins Atlantic on construction machinery. After a few contacts with port engineers who were using Cummins Marine engines he opted for a pair of KTA38 MO engines rated at 800 HP and utilizing the existing Twin Disc 540 7:1 gears and the 70x67-inch twin propellers.

"We're a proactive company on environmental issues," says Tommy Callis, "with the new emissions regulations coming down we wanted to meet them ahead of time."

Working in the sensitive waters of Chesapeake Bay this makes good sense. Typically the boat is towing two 200-foot 1500-ton wood chip barges from satellite plants around the Bay to the paper plant at West Point. The longest run up into Maryland is about 250 miles round trip. "We push the barges when we can," explains Callis, "As we gain a couple of knots of speed. We use the towing winch when pushing with a pair of 95-foot side cables passing through rolling chocks on the aft deck. When heavy weather requires towing we use 1 1/4-inch cable with 10-inch Dacron becketts on the barges serving as shock-lines. Depending on the weather we will have up to 1000-feet of wire out."

The repower work is scheduled for May at the Colonnas Shipyard in Norfolk Virginia.

For More information contact:

Tommy Callis
Marine Superintendent
St. Laurent Forest Products Corp.
15th and Main Streets
P.O. Box 100 West Point
Virginia 23181
Tel.: (804) 843-5249 Fax: (804) 843_5155

Sonny Hawkins
Inland Equipment
Chesapeake, Virginia
Phone: (757) 547-5131

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