Page 34: of Marine News Magazine (November 2020)

33 35

WORKBOATS

Workboat Prof le:

Geronimo

By Eric Haun

Sause Bros. Ocean Towing Co.

ause Bros. Ocean Towing Co., Inc., based in Coos dent of hull and machinery at Sause Bros.

Bay, Ore., got its start transporting timber with a Babcock has worked at Sause since 1993, ? rst as an en- single wooden tug in the 1930s. The company has gineer working through various construction and repair

S grown through the years to provide a full range of projects before becoming engineering manager and then a marine transportation services to clients in the Paci? c Rim: VP. He has seen many construction projects and countless from ocean towing, cargo handling, oil towing and ship repair jobs over the years, witnessing ? rsthand a number of assist, to marine construction and repair. technological step changes put into application.

Today the company owns and operates a ? eet of ocean “From our standpoint, the biggest improvements have towing tugs from 3,000 to 6,000 horsepower and a ? eet been in the advancements of computational ? uid dynam- of oil and deck barges that run along the U.S. West Coast ics, which we use as a key part of our design efforts. The and Hawaii, and in recent years it found that it was time technology has become much more sophisticated and has to replace some of its tugs built in the ’70s with more improved our con? dence with the results,” Babcock said.

modern equipment. “The biggest gains in ef? ciency through ? uid dynamics

Construction on a pair of new 4,500-horsepower twin have been on the barge side, and have helped to change the screw tugs to support Sause’s oil transportation business designs of the bows and sterns to minimize wave making, was originally started in 2015, and the company tried for which allows us to tow barges at higher speeds without a very short period to build the vessels themselves before a increasing horsepower,” he explained.

backlog of repair work and other projects led them to hire The new tugs Apache and Geronimo, which Babcock

Diversi? ed Marine, Inc. (DMI) in Portland, Ore. to take described as “fairly typical hard-chined tugboats”, were over the newbuild project, said Mark Babcock, vice presi- delivered from DMI in July 2019 and September 2020

November 2020 34 MN