One in one out for US tug shipbuilder

A major tugboat builder has finished one newbuilding campaign and has started another for different owners.

Conrad Industries’ shipyard has delivered Kāpena Bob Purdy to Foss Maritime subsidiary Young Brothers. This is the last of four Kāpena-class tugs Conrad is building for inter-island towage services in Hawaii, bringing an end to the newbuilding programme for Young Brothers.

This tug was built at Conrad Amelia in Amelia, Louisiana, and was named in May before leaving the shipyard for sea trials in June and its route to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Kāpena-class tugs are built to ABS class and Damen USA design to meet environmental protection agency (EPA) Tier 4 requirements.

These include Kāpena Jack Young, Kāpena Raymond Alapa’i delivered in 2018 and Kāpena George Panui that entered service in Q2 2019.

They have an overall length of 37.5 m, beam of 11 m beam and 4,475 kW of power.

Kāpena Bob Purdy has General Electric 8L250 MDC engines with exhaust gas recirculation. The first of these tugs, Kāpena Jack Young, was delivered in September 2018.

Conrad Shipyards has one more of these Kāpena-class tugs to complete.

The group has another towboat to build as part of a series based on MiNO Marine designs.

Conrad Amelia Shipyard is constructing a 50.5-m towboat with a combined power of 4,475-kW.

This MiNO 6000 class vessel will be Subchapter M compliant and meet EPA Tier 4 emissions requirements. It will be 15 m wide and have a 3.6 m hull depth.

This towboat will be fitted with GE engines driving two conventional propellers within Kort nozzles.

• Tugs added to two US towage fleets
• Owners invest in ATBs for US trade
• Yards benefit from newbuilding surge

The hullform was developed through extensive engineering analysis using computational fluid dynamics methods. This resulted in an efficient hulform suitable for a wide range of operating conditions while also minimising potential for flow induced vibrations.

MiNo Marine also carried out extensive structural vibration analyses using finite element techniques to minimise resonant structural vibrations for better crew comfort.

Here is a video, by Conrad Industries, of Kāpena Bob Purdy sailing to Hawaii