Page 31: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2023)

COVER STORY CURTIN MARITIME to mechanical dredging.” offshore towing performance.”

That started the company on a faster growth track, from two While older tugboats mean proportionately higher operat- employees in 1997, to 20 employees in 2014, to 50 employees ing expenses, Curtin said “at the end of the day we have good in 2016, to 100 employees in 2019, and to 270 employees today. fuel ef? ciency, high bollard pull, high towing speeds, and we

In 2015 Curtin Maritime built its ? rst pair of dump scows, can offset the age of the vessel and the maintenance cost by while also adding a second tug, the Kelly C, a full rebuild performance. The majority of our tugs have either been totally and repower. reconditioned or repowered by us. We strategically buy older “Today we operate a ? eet of 14 tugboats, four crane barges assets, but very speci? c ones.” and ? ve split haul dump scows up to 6,000 yards, as well as For its capital dredging side of the business, Curtin Mari- two ABS load line ramp barges,” said Curtin. “We have an time builds new because the majority are barges, “and barge

ABS load line four by one in our ? eet, the Lost Point. And cost is a little more palatable.” then we have about a half a dozen inland service charter barg- The company recently commissioned three 6,000 cubic es that are spread out between San Francisco Bay, San Diego yard dump scows through Gundersen, and it built the DB Ava- and LA/Long Beach. We have 185-ft. Tier Two DP1 crew util- lon, “with what is the largest capacity clamshell dredge in the ity vessel that we operate, the Rebekah C,” as well as numer- Americas on it.” ous additional support vessels. “We have another large-scale clamshell dredge that we’ll

The Curtin Maritime tugboat ? eet is an older ? eet. “The be commissioning in mid-2024, and a series of dump scows majority of our ocean boats are 1970s vintage, but they were that will go along with that,” said Curtin. “So we’re going to all speci? cally purchased for performance reasons,” said Cur- be probably build vessels for the next ? ve years to round out tin. “We have a lot of McDermott 126 hulls with Nautican our mechanical dredging side of our business and then ob- packages on them that outperforms anything built today. All viously the marine transportation component that goes along of our big ocean boats were speci? cally purchased for their with those scows and those rigs.”

Visit us at

OTC 2023

Booth # 1338 3030 E. Pershing St.

Appleton, WI 54911 USA [email protected] www.appletonmarine.com

Phone: (920) 738-5432

Manufactured in the USA www.marinelink.com 31

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