Page 34: of Marine News Magazine (April 2022)

33 35

Feature

Ship Repair & Conversion

Sandy Hook Pilots Association

NY/NJ PILOTS REPLACE 50-YEAR-OLD STATION VESSEL

WITH RETROFITTED OIL SPILL RESPONSE BOAT.

By Eric Haun hen it came time to replace their 50-year- The Sandy Hook Pilots use a rotation of two station old station vessel New York, the Sandy vessels, New York and New Jersey, that basically serve as

Hook Pilots Association thought long offshore hotel of? ces for the association’s pilots as well as and hard, weighing their options to de- traf? c control for the port. The older of their two vessels,

W termine the best possible solution. They traveled the coun- the 182-foot New York, entered service in 1972, and is the try, to Houston, San Francisco and up to the Columbia last large station vessel in the U.S. The boat gained an ad-

River, and even to Europe—the Elbe River in Germany ditional 15 years of service following a repower and refresh and Rotterdam in the Netherlands—to ride with other pi- in 2004, but the pilots began looking for a replacement as lots in search of an answer. its useful life started to run short. “We looked at everything from SWATH (small-water- After determining the $30 million price tag for a po- plane-area twin hull) boats to helicopters to big boats in Eu- tential newbuild would be too steep, the pilots began rope, and ultimately came to the conclusion that we were their next search mission: tracking down a vessel that going to stay with a large boat operation,” said Ed Burns, would be the perfect conversion candidate. “We stum- marine superintendent for the Staten Island-based pilots bled across the Maine Responder laid up in Portland, group, which provides pilotage services to all foreign ? ag ves- Maine and made the decision that it would probably be a sels and American vessels under register entering or departing good ? t for us,” Burns said.

the Port of New York/New Jersey, the Hudson River, the East Asked what made the Maine Responder—a 1993-built

River, Atlantic City, Jamaica Bay and Long Island Sound. oil spill response vessel (OSRV) previously used by Marine 34 | MN April 2022