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EDITOR’S NOTE or some publishers, the ? nal edition of the year can be an afterthought; something that they’ve somehow got to push out the door (with a sigh of relief) just before the holidays; regardless of what it contains. Not so here at MarineNews. On the contrary, the arrival of December

F edition prompts me to look back on the past 12 months and ask some basic questions. What did we get right; what could’ve gone better and what happened that we didn’t expect? And, that’s just inside of my shop. What happened in your world is more interesting – and far more important.

To say that 2017 was eventful would not provide full disclosure to a year which saw unprec- edented attacks on the Jones Act, a ferry/passenger vessel building boom the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a decade, and a lingering offshore energy downturn which has crippled the

U.S. ? ag OSV sector. There was something for everyone: laughter, tears, political wrangling and [email protected] a regulatory environment that has been anything but kind to the domestic waterfront. Through it all, you turned to MarineNews to sort it all out, and we delivered.

Without a doubt, one of my favorite exercises in any given year is composing the DRAFT entry for the top 10 stories of the year. That document is voluminous and typically contains as many as 25 bullets which I laboriously whittle down to a more compact ten. I craft that list to apply strictly to the brown water segment of the industry; from coast to coast, inland, offshore and everything in between. Now, it is time to see if your short list compares well to mine. The story begins on page 40.

With the inevitable challenges, setbacks and political drama also comes the milestones and victories. 2017 brought plenty of the latter. For example, the lineup of workboats that grace our annual look at the best of North America’s brown water shipyard output is as impressive as

I’ve seen in many years. Here, again, the buck stops at my desk. Before you turn to page 44 to see these impressive vessels, know in advance that my criteria included (? rst) the environmental footprint of a particular hull, the innovation that each entry represents and the competitive nature of U.S. yards that allows a particular hull to be exported to foreign markets.

Arguably, the big story for 2017 involves the regulatory pressures exerted onto the domes- tic waterfront and more speci? cally, the workboat sector. For inland stakeholders, particularly those who take shelter in a ‘tier-beater’ propulsion arrangement, that pressure comes primarily in the form of the subchapter M towboat rules. For everyone else, it means the advent of the 2020 emissions rules, Tier 4 enforcement and low sulphur distillates. Here to guide you on the way forward is longtime MarineNews stalwart Bob Kunkel and his associate and naval architect

Chris Mandalakis. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask as we quickly head into 2018? It’s all here and more. See you in 2018.

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Joseph Keefe, Editor, [email protected]

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