PCTC

or peazey-teasey?    Tamesis— thanks to Brian DeForest for this photo–was built in 2000.  And what is Tamesis?

Topeka, with a slightly different design, dates from 2006.  In the Topeka series, there are at least 10.

Here Topeka has the stern ramp down in Bayonne.

Turandot dates from 1995.

Tortugas, seen here Pacific bound on the Panama Canal, began service the same year as Topeka.  This series is powered by a 17750 hp Mitsubishi plant that looks like this.

To see how this design has evolved over the better part of a century, click here.

For previous tugster posts showing PCTCs, click here and here.    And see Tortugas leaving coastal Colombia here.

Thanks to Brian DeForest for the top photo.  All others by Will Van Dorp, who dedicates this post to bowsprite, who offered this version of a Tortugas’ sister here in December.

 

Colombian Tugs

Two years ago, I wrote about Columbian tugs here, and alluded to reading of some new ones in Colombia here.   Here and here –one more here–are some others from the great river in the Northwest.   Thanks to the Maraki crew, here is some activity from along the northwest corner of South America.  Click here to read Maraki‘s account of conditions in this corner of the Caribbean

The big tug Atlas, built in Japan in 1991, seems to have trolling rods deployed, or am I seeing that wrong.

Tayrona is from 2014 and Peru built.  Click here for more of the fleet.

GPC Tesoro is China built in 2013.

Here they escort Baltic Pride out to sea on a run to the  . . . Baltic.

Pino, China built 2007.

And Tortugas, RORO heads for the Canal, where I saw her about three years ago.  I have lots more photos of her there I’ve never used.  I wonder how long before Atlas‘ lines go tight with something huge.

Colombian Coast Guard interceptor boat?

All photos compliments of my sister.

A few more Colombian tugs can be seen here.

Back in the Sixth Boro

To paraphrase the line about the chanteuse grosse and something “being over,”  I couldn’t really feel

that I was back until the

the fat lady came into port, then the big orange PCTC must be she.    Topeka entered the sixth boro this morning, here escorted by Gramma Lee T Moran and Margaret Moran.

It turns out that Topeka and

Tortugas, which I saw just over two weeks ago in Panama, could not be more similar.  Both were built in Nagasaki in 2006, registered in Southhampton, and have a car-carrying capacity of 6354 automobiles!

Topeka’s itinerary for March is as follows:

2012 March 30th, 10:00:09 UTC	New York
2012 March 28th, 08:30:29 UTC	Halifax
2012 March 18th, 01:00:53 UTC	Southampton
2012 March 15th, 22:00:24 UTC	Zeebrugge
2012 March 13th, 23:00:50 UTC	Bremerhaven
2012 March 11th, 13:00:27 UTC	Zeebrugge
2012 March 6th, 05:00:54 UTC	Barcelona
2012 March 4th, 22:00:49 UTC	Voltri
2012 March 1st, 19:00:17 UTC	Izmir

Tortugas‘s for the past two months is as follows:

2012 April 7th, 06:00:56 UTC	Yokohama
2012 March 26th, 01:00:23 UTC	Tacoma
2012 March 22nd, 07:30:45 UTC	Port Hueneme
2012 March 12th, 13:00:30 UTC	Manzanillo
2012 February 29th, 02:45:56 UTC	Southampton
2012 February 27th, 10:00:16 UTC	Zeebrugge
2012 February 24th, 15:00:35 UTC	Bremerhauen
2012 February 5th, 05:00:55 UTC	Brunswick
2012 February 2nd, 18:00:15 UTC	Newark Berth 17
2012 February 2nd, 05:00:23 UTC	New York

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.