VESSEL REVIEW | Svitzer Port Said 1 & Svitzer Port Said 2 – Multi-purpose tug pair for rapidly growing Port Said

Hong Kong-based shipbuilder Cheoy Lee's Hin Lee Zhuhai Shipyard in China's Guangdong Province has completed two new escort tugs for Svitzer Middle East's operations out of Port Said in northeast Egypt.

The appropriately named Svitzer Port Said 1 and Svitzer Port Said 2 are from the same series of 32-metre tugs that are designed for performing ship-handling roles including berthing, unberthing, harbour towing, and escort as well as secondary firefighting duties.

Having two vessels capable of multiple functions was deemed necessary by Svitzer after the company realised early on that each tug would have to serve no less than 10 different vessels every day while operating out of Port Said, the busiest container port in Egypt and the gateway between the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. The tug's operators have even projected that the volume of serviced vessels would nearly double following the completion of a new jetty extension at the port.

The two LR-classed tugs were designed by Canadian naval architecture firm Robert Allan Ltd specifically to take on this significant expected workload.

Both were thus consequently built with all-steel construction and fitted with twin Caterpillar 3516C diesel engines each rated for 2,525 kW at 1,800 rpm, two Caterpillar C7.1 118kW generators, a FiFi1 external firefighting system with water spray and 12-cubic-metre foam tank, a Guerra M95.20A crane with 5.8-metre reach, and PTO-driven hydraulic deck machinery from MacGregor that includes a forward-mounted recovery escort winch and an aft-mounted towing winch.

The tugs are also capable of speeds in excess of 13 knots and a bollard pull (ahead) of 82 tonnes.

Each tug can accommodate a crew of 10 in MLC 2006-compliant berths consisting of two single cabins for the captain and the chief engineer on the main deck and four two-man cabins for the remainder of the crew on the lower deck. A Viking 10-man liferaft and a Narwhal 4.2-metre six-passenger SOLAS rescue boat, which is to be used primarily for the recovery of crew who have fallen overboard, constitute the vessels' key pieces of lifesaving equipment. Much of the electronics including the radar, depth sounder, radio, compass, GPS, and AIS transponder were supplied by Furuno.

Svitzer Port Said 1 and Svitzer Port Said 2 have already begun operations to support the continually expanding operations of the Suez Canal Container Terminal. This is in fulfilment of Svitzer's second contract in Egypt, a 10-year towage services agreement signed with the Suez Canal Authority in March 2019.

See all the content from the current Tug and Salvage Week right here