Page 45: of Marine News Magazine (July 2017)

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PROPULSION

The ABC’s of ACBL’s Early Adoption and our continued positive experience

In a white paper released in 2014 by with Z-drives this is very likely to con-

The Shearer Group, Ed Shearer and tinue to grow in the coming years.”

Greg Beers described the next genera- tion of inland vessels, what will drive Z-Drives: stirring up that brown water design changes and the advantages Two Z-Drive tugs can theoretically of azimuthing stern drives – or ‘Z- take the place of four conventional

Drives,’ for short. The authors point- tugs during the typical ship docking ed out that towboats on all the inland operation. But, how does that ‘power waterways and Gulf Coast have tradi- metric’ translate to inland pushboat tionally been built using main engines operations? We asked Foster in June connected to reduction gearboxes and he explained, “We expect that four connected to long drive shafts passing to