Long Beach Dolphins

For companies such as Foss Maritime, who provide tug and harbour assist services in the USA’s busiest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, it’s a constant challenge for the skills of the crews and the technical capability of the tugs.

The agility and speed of their new Dolphin-class tugs has proven to be a major asset for Foss Maritime, as they move the vast cargo ships safely in and out of the California ports.

Foss Maritime not only operates the Dolphin-class tugs but played a significant role in their design too. The company built the vessels at its Rainier, Oregon shipyard, further up the US West Coast.

The Dolphin tugs each have two Rolls-Royce US205-Z drive azimuthing thrusters, delivering the power response and remarkable manoeuvrability that has made them so popular with the Foss crews and other operators already.

The boats are 78ft in length with a 34ft beam, producing plenty of power and strength from a small overall package. Two diesel engines deliver just over 5,000hp to the Rolls-Royce thrusters. The Dolphin tugs have proven ideal for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach where they entered service in 2005. These ports handle more traffic than any others in the US. More recently they have been accommodating very large container ships of up to 8,200 TEUs as well as double-hull oil tankers, which have replaced the smaller single-hull tankers.

Precision

Some of the largest container ships entering Long Beach have a clearance of less than 10ft below the road bridge that spans the port, and the waterway is relatively narrow too. It calls for precision work on behalf of the pilots and the tugs – as the larger vessels enter the approach to Long Beach there is no margin for error. The highly manoeuvrable and responsive Dolphin tugs have proven invaluable.

For Foss, the success of the new Dolphin tugs has been one that the whole company seems to be delighted with. It was the first time they had taken the plunge to design, build and operate their own vessel.