British Columbia, Canada: At the mouth of the Fraser River the tides routinely have a 3.5-metre range. Sixty-five kilometres upriver at Mission, the coastal mountains are beginning to crowd the flat farmland, but still the tidal range is frequently 1.8 metres. No salt water reaches this far as the tide only serves to back up the river water. But the river can slow to a crawl from the pressure of the flood tide, and with the combined ebb and river current, the flow can be dramatic.
This is no place for the faint of heart, especially when operating a towboat in the river currents. But this is the routine for the operators of the boats at Catherwood Towing based in Mission, BC. Much of the work involves moving booms from storage along the river side to lumber and shingle mills that are also along the river. The booms are made up in 18-metre by 18-metre sections and are chained together.
Capt. Butch Salsbury on Cahterwood's 'Sea Imp X' explains that when he started with the company 22 years ago they would often deliver enough sections to a sawmill to last them for a week, but now, with escalating log prices, the mills want the logs delivered one or two sections at a time. "And they want it right now," he laughs.
That is why he is enthusiastic about the re-power that the 'Sea Imp X' got last year. "We took out a pair of 300kW engines and put in a pair of 370kW Cummins KTA19 engines," says company founder and president Ernie Catherwood. "Now that boat really gets up and goes, I wish I was still running the boats."
An 11-metre, 820kW twin-screw tug is a long way from where Mr Catherwood started back in 1971. He spent some youthful years working as a boom man with his father and got to run a small boom boat from time to time. Like most young men, he wandered a bit and had some adventures including winning the log rolling contest in the Logger's Sports at Osaka's Expo '70, but when the time came to get serious about life, his father suggested he buy a tug boat.
The 'Sea Imp' was a wooden hulled river-tug with a Jimmy 6-71 rotor that put out a grand total of 123kW. The work was mostly moving booms a short distance from storage to the cedar shake mills near Mission.
Not one to stand still, Mr Catherwood worked extra shifts and made enough money to qualify for a bank loan and built his first steel boat, the 'Sea Imp III' in 1980, which was just in time to see the sky rocketing interest rates of the early 1980s. The challenges of high interest were an important business lesson. The solution was more hard work and an expansion of his towing territory to include yarding logs up from the mouth of the river and even towing barge loads of cedar shake bolts from up coast logging operations.
These were challenging orders for small tugs but they were profitable and Mr Catherwood survived the interest peaks and added more boats to his fleet. He chose a respected brand of engines for his new boats but when he bought the Cummins-powered Promoter from another operator he was pleased.
"The power impressed me," he recalls of that purchase.
When one of the other companies on the river told of pulling a Cummins KTA19 engine with nearly 30,000 hours on it but found there was not enough wear to justify a rebuild, Mr Catherwood was impressed. He checked around the industry about the Cummins Western Canada distributor.
When his tugs 'Sea Imp VIII' and 'Sea Imp X' came up for re-power he pulled the old 300kW engines and replaced them with new Cummins KTA19 engines rated at 370kW each.
"We used the same Twin Disc gears but added pitch to the 135cm nozzled-wheels on the 'Sea Imp VIII' and gained 1.5 to 2 knots in speed as well as increased towing power," he says. "That equals eight hours saved on a run from Prince Rupert to Vancouver. For British Columbian operators, getting a tug to the right place to do a job and take advantage of a fair tide is all-important both on the coast and in the Fraser River."
For the re-power of the 11-metre 'Sea Imp X', Mr Catherwood changed the Twin Disc gear from a Twin Disc 514 5.07:1 gear for a Twin Disc 516 4.5:1 as this latter gear can handle up to 520kW. The results are, says Mr Catherwood, "like driving a side-winder," which is a reference to a very powerful little boat for working around booms.
The river yarding tugs are fitted with kort nozzles and large solid steel bars for protection from river logs. It is to retain these structures that makes modifying the gear selection and adding pitch to the props the most practical way to utilise the increased power.
Mr Catherwood's first Cummins powered boat with the twin K19s was the 'Promoter' that they purchased with some hours already on the engines. Mr Catherwood calculates that the engines now have over 20,000 hours each.
"We change oil every 250 hours and each time we cut a filter open and squeeze the paper in a vise. If any metal shows up when you unfold the dried accordion of paper you know that there is trouble. But those engines are doing fine."
This spring Mr Catherwood will take delivery of his first new-build with Cummins KTA19 main engines. The 'Sea Imp IX' will be 16.3 metres in overall length with a hefty 6.7-metre beam and a 2.9-metre draught.
As were several of the boats in the fleet, the new boat is being built to a design by West Vancouver-based A G McIlwain who understands the demands of a yarding tug that will be required to do some coast wide work as well. With fuel tanks for 45,000 litres of fuel, the boat will have the range for longer tows along the BC coast.
With that in mind it has accommodation for four crewmembers. As is the practice for tugs working around logs, the new boat will have channel iron guards covering the exterior of the hull to protect the tug when working against heavy logs.
The electronics will match the extensive suite that the other vessels have with depth sounders for working the river and auto-pilots to avoid over steer and provide fuel efficient steering with the heavy log booms.
A more recent addition is the Tough Book lap top computer that includes the electronic charts but also allows the transmission of location and other data such as speed and direction from the vessel. The data from the new boat will join that of the other 14 boats in the fleet on a huge flat screen display in the company's dispatch office.
Plans are also in the works at Catherwood to expand this proprietary system to include transponders, which can be placed on log booms or barges to allow owners to track locations and content in real time.
While log movements are reduced on the river so that they make up only 25 percent of Catherwoods work, they have made up the difference with barge and construction support. The company took delivery of a new boat at the start of the early '80s interest spike and now they take delivery of a new boat as a new economic challenge sets in but the same determination and good management that saw them through the earlier decades will take them through the coming months and years.
Alan Haig-Brown