Great Lakes Towing welcomes newbuild on 125th anniversary

Great Lakes Towing Co has added another newbuild to its fleet of ice-class tugboats as it celebrated 125 years of business.

The US vessel owner named tugboat Minnesota following its construction at Great Lakes Shipyard to a Damen design. The latest Cleveland-class newbuild was built to US Coast Guard and ABS requirements for towing, handling and docking ships in the ports along the coasts of the Great Lakes of North America.

It was named by Cleveland Metroparks chief development officer Natalie Ronayne during Great Lakes Towing’s celebrations.

This is the eighth Cleveland-class vessel built as part of the company’s 10-tug fleet renewal campaign. These 19-m newbuild tugs are based on Damen’s Stan Tug 1907 ICE design with a beam of 7 m and hull depth of around 3 m, plus additional hull plate thickness, brackets and fendering for working in surface ice.

Propulsion for these tugboats consists of two Rolls-Royce Solutions’ mtu 4000-series diesel engines with eight cylinders in V formation, each coupled with Twin Disc MGX-5321 reduction gears at a ratio of 5.46:1, driving a Kaplan three-bladed, fixed-pitch propeller, with a diameter of 1,803 mm, mounted in Kort nozzles.

This twin-screw configuration is compliant with US Environmental Protection Agency Tier 3 emissions standards and produces a total output of 1,491 kW. Two 99-kW Kohler generator sets provide power for deck machinery that includes a DMT Marine CE-30KN capstan on the stern for towing operations.