Feature 1 | TUGS
New training tug supports newcomers to towing industry
A manning crisis in the towing industry looms due to the imminent retirement of experienced mariners and a dearth of new entrants in the tug working environment. Robert Allan Ltd and Burchett Marine Inc have challenged this problem with a training tug project.
T
he growth in the number of new large vessels entering the market requires ever more powerful and
sophisticated tugs to manage them in port. One of the major obstacles to new personnel entries is the typical licensing requirement in most jurisdictions which is largely time-based rather than qualifications or capability-based. The current licensing requirements
have alluded to the idea that if you ‘spend enough time onboard and you must learn how to drive the boat’. Tere is no question that a certain degree of onboard experience is an essential requirement for any ship’s officer, but with the advent of new technologies, especially in the context of harbour ship-handling, the ability to efficiently handle the new generation of very powerful Z-drive and Voith Schneider Propeller (VSP) tugs is far more critical than knowing how to use a sextant for example. This challenge has been met in the
• Large enough to be very realistic and fully safe in all training operations;
BRAtt training vessel project. For a number of years the principals of Robert Allan Ltd and Burchett Marine Inc have been discussing the potential for designing and building a lower-cost, ‘driveable’ scale model tug to use as a training vessel. Tis boat would have to be:
• Large enough to have real-time response actions;
• Be powerful enough to perform some ‘real work’ where the situation
• Be fully class-certifiable if required; and warrants;
• Be small enough to be load-deliverable. The concept resulting from these
deliberations is the BRAtt, the Burchett- Robert Allan training tug.
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Three views of the BRAtt tug prototype as illustrated in this graphic (Credit: Robert Allan Ltd/Burchett Marine Inc).
•Te vessel has a much lower cost than a full-size tug;
Te proposed benefits of the BRAtt as a training vessel are:
•Working assets are not taken out of revenue-producing service due to
•Te risk to full-size tug assets during training is eliminated;
operator training;
•Te cost of training operations is much reduced, due to use of a lower-cost
vessel and no additional crew are involved while one person trains. Potential master can be trained much faster and more effectively with an
• If some yarding or harbour towing work is available, cost recovery is possible
intensive skills-based process;
• This platform can also be used to demonstrate emerging power source
using the BRAtt as an active tug; and
technologies in the marine sector, for example hybrid systems and fuel cell technology.
Due to the rapidly changing market
demands for low vessel emissions, four versions of the BRAtt are under development to allow the clients of Burchett Marine and Robert Allan the
Ship & Boat International July/August 2010
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