The Tug Of Tugs -- Foss Maritime Develops Boat That Exerts More Pull, Maneuverability

ABOARD THE LINDSEY FOSS - Ocean spray scribbles across the wheelhouse windows as the Lindsey Foss - the world's largest and most powerful tugboat - flattens wind-whipped white caps in the Strait of Juan De Fuca.

Less than 100 feet to its starboard side is the 869-foot Prince William Sound, a fully laden oil tanker. Its black hull striped with rust, the tanker is as splotchy and plodding as the 155-foot Lindsey is fresh-painted and maneuverable. The Lindsey is escorting the tanker to the British Petroleum refinery at Ferndale. The journey began a couple of hours earlier, at a buoy 14 miles east of Port Angeles.

It is a routine voyage, but it was born of environmental catastrophe. If it weren't for the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, Seattle-based Foss Maritime Co. might never have built the souped-up Lindsey.

As the vessels push north, the entrance to Rosario Strait clarifies on the horizon. The radio in the Lindsey crackles. It's the tanker pilot. He sees something that he does not like: another tanker, the Star Rhode Island. It is emerging in the opposite direction from Rosario Strait, and it is too close to the Prince William Sound and its 800,000 barrels of Alaskan crude.

In the next 30 seconds, the Lindsey demonstrates why Foss Maritime spent $11 million on the tug and in the process, said one maritime-industry watcher, made naval-architecture history.

This is certainly no emergency, but oil tankers are on strict

schedules, and its pilots do not like to put on the brakes more than is necessary. So, the pilot asks the Lindsey to come around and push on its "port quarter" - on the left side just forward of the tanker's stern. The pilot wants help turning his vessel without slowing down much.

The Lindsey eases back to about 10 knots, from its top speed of 15 knots. Its captain, Duane Crowley, stands at the ready in its soaring and carpeted wheelhouse, around which wrap 14 windows. Crowley turns a wheel with a beefy index finger and throws a lever controlling the Lindsey's German-made cycloidal propellers, which extend vertically like five giant fingers from the bottom of the hull. The cycloidal props allow the tugboat, which has no rudder, to change direction in an instant.

The nimble Lindsey scuttles like a crab across the frothy gap to the tanker. Crowley kisses his boat's stern against the tanker's hull, then pushes into the Prince William Sound with 1,000 of the Lindsey's 8,000 horsepower.

Within seconds, the bow of the Prince William Sound slides perceptibly to the left. Both vessels maintain their speed, about 10 knots. Eventually, the Prince William Sound noses into Rosario Strait.

Said Crowley: "What'd I tell you? If we can catch 'em, we can exert force on `em."

With its contemporary silhouette, fire-fighting water cannons and state-of-the-art propulsion system, the Lindsey is a tugboat of and for the 1990s. It gives Foss a competitive edge, the oil companies a public relations coup and even environmentalists a qualified measure of confidence about oil-spill prevention.

Some even call it the Super Tug.

Lindsey's attributes

Maneuverability is only one of the Lindsey's attributes. The other is brute strength.

An extension of the keel known commonly as a skeg - it looks like an inverted fin - dips 16 feet from the waterline. This structure allows the Lindsey to exert much more pull than its 8,000 horsepower might indicate. The Lindsey's sheer size - it's about 50 feet longer than a typical tugboat - also helps it exert pulling force.

Down below aboard the ship is a white-washed chamber that the crew calls the "Voith Room." Two charcoal-gray circular steel casings measure 18 feet across. Beneath each casing, a single German-built Voith-Schneider cycloidal propeller unit descends into the water. Each unit has five arms from which descend a blade. Each of the blades is 5 feet across and 7 feet 7 inches long.

From the wheelhouse, the captain feathers the blades of the propellers, which push the water and propel the vessel not only forward and backward, but also sideways. The skipper can control how fast blades travel in their circular path.

At the correct angle from whatever it is tied up to, the Lindsey actually can exert 20,000 horsepower of force. This is the kind of power needed to stop and steer an oil tanker if it's in trouble.

The Lindsey is the product of 2 1/2 years of study by Foss, said Steve Scalzo, the com2pany's senior vice president for operations. It was joined this month by its twin, the Garth Foss, also priced at $11 million. It all began in 1990, not long after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

"In the wake of Exxon Valdez, everyone stepped back and said, `What kind of improvements can be made?' " said Scalzo, who has written scientific papers and spoken to the Royal Academy of Naval Architects in London about cycloidal-powered tugs, which are known as "tractors."

Foss already had introduced "tractor tugs" to Puget Sound in 1982, but with four smaller boats.

The Lindsey's gee-whiz list is lengthy, but it probably could not satisfy the concerns of some people who point out that environmental disasters usually manage to outstrip humans' most inspired prevention efforts.

Some of these same people point out that a "tractor fad" has gripped the maritime industry and that Foss has a financial interest in further regulation of oil-tanker escorts.

Scalzo and others associated with the project freely acknowledge that Foss has a competitive edge with its unique equipment. They're proud of their edge. Tractor tugs generally run $600 to $700 an hour for tug-company customers, about a third more than the price for conventionally powered tugs. Foss wouldn't specify the going rate for the Lindsey, however.

"There's a lot more tugboats than there are jobs for," said Tim Brewer, vice president of sales. "The need to be ever-better is not just part of our job. We have to do it."

Foss' development of the Lindsey is in keeping with the aggressive nature of the 105-year-old company. Last summer, Foss acquired Brix Maritime, with its 125 barges and tugs. Among other things, the acquisition makes Foss a force in the lucrative Columbia River ports. Two years ago, one of Foss' subsidiaries acquired oil-spill and disaster-response units from Burlington Environmental. Foss boats were at the major oil spill in Puerto Rico last January.

To secure income against its substantial investment in the Lindsey and its twin vessel, Foss made an agreement with ARCO and British Petroleum. The two oil companies will use the new tugs whenever their loaded tankers are moving in and out of facilities at Cherry Point and Ferndale.

In designing the tugs, engineering studies took Foss people and their consultants to the Netherlands, where models were tested in the same football-field-size tanks where America's Cup skippers test their high-tech sailing yachts. They also went out on Puget Sound. There, engineers studied the real-life interactions between tugs and tankers.

Engineers at The Glosten Associates, the naval architecture firm in Pioneer Square that drew up the preliminary designs and worked with Foss designers on the Lindsey, devised computer simulations to further explore what sort of vessel should be built.

The daily duty of the new tug is to escort and assist oil tankers on their 40-to-60-mile voyages from the western portion of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to refineries. It's supposed to stop or turn a tanker that has lost steering or power. But the Lindsey can do more:

-- For firefighting, it has two cherry-red water cannons facing its stern that each can blast 6,600 gallons of water a minute. If these monsters were aimed directly into the water, they would propel the 475-ton vessel at 3 knots.

-- Dozens of nozzles on the tug's decks and wheelhouse can emit a fine spray, which would envelope the Lindsey in a protective shroud of mist as its crew fought a fire. Concentrated fire-retarding foam is also aboard.

-- The Lindsey's raised forward deck and high-riding stern don't just give it a modern look: These are "sea-keeping" characteristics that should enable the crew to perform rescue work in heavy weather, its designers claim. The ship's main deck is of convex "whaleback" design, so water theoretically will roll off. Two hefty breakwaters - steel retaining walls at the front and rear of the vessel - should also repel surging seas.

Despite the Lindsey Foss' eye-catching design and impressive power, many observers wonder whether it will give people a false sense of security.

The concerns are emerging as the U.S. Coast Guard prepares to release this summer its new rules for oil-tanker escorts in Puget Sound. The federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990 will require two tugs to escort each tanker, said Tom Jordan, who manages the Coast Guard's escort-rules project.

With the agency's "performance criteria" now under review, it's possible that a vessel such as the Lindsey Foss could be paired on escorts with smaller, conventional tugs. Those conventional tugs would be able to keep up with the Lindsey, but whether they could assist in a real emergency at those high speeds is questionable.

In such cases, would the tanker essentially have just one tug to assist it- the Lindsey, or its twin, the Garth?

"Technically, the Lindsey is a very, very good ship," said Ed Wenk, longtime tanker-safety expert who helped write some of the state's original escorting laws. "I can only say favorable things about it. The question is, what happens when everything goes wrong? You lose power and steering and you're out in terrible weather? No one knows if one tug will do it."

The big tugs also allow the tankers to run faster, and that rankles people such as Fred Felleman, who is the governor-appointed environmentalist to the state Maritime Commission. Felleman agrees with marine consultants who say slower tanker speeds are one effective way to increase safety. But the Lindsey allows for faster tanker transits.

Even Felleman described the Lindsey as "phenomenal," but said tanker escorts should be required east from Cape Flattery, at the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, especially because a new National Marine Sanctuary will open this summer along the Olympic Coast.

"We continue to load all our eggs in the same basket - escort east from Port Angeles," said Felleman. "It's time we broadened that view."

From a business standpoint, Foss has a curious - some might say enviable - vantage point as the issues continue to unfold.

The company is economically linked to the oil companies that covet its high-tech Lindsey and Garth. It also generously provided tanker-tug performance data to the Coast Guard, which is the main regulatory agency. And Foss could hardly argue with those who would require lengthier escorts or double-tug escorts.

It's all good for the towboat business.

Ship's crew

In the words of one of his crew, Lindsey captain Crowley draws a lot of water at Foss.

That means he's a significant personality at the company, even if he possesses neither an office nor a fancy title. In the maritime world, skippers' status usually rises with the horsepower of their vessels. Tugboats do not get any more powerful than the Lindsey.

The Crowleys are one of those families, as the saying goes, that bleed the trademark Foss colors of green and white.

Duane Crowley has worked at Foss for 30 years. His father, who retired in 1977, was a Foss captain for 33 years. Duane's older brother, Ray, has been at the company for 33 years, and he actually relieves Duane aboard the Lindsey as they each work two weeks on, two weeks off.

"I've run every kind of boat Foss has," said Duane, 50, who started out in Everett Harbor running log broncs, the stubby steel boats that corral floating timber in inland waters.

"I remember when I first started running boats, they called you the `Old Man,' and I was the youngest man on the boat," Crowley said. "Now, I'm running the boat, they call me `Old Man,' and I am the oldest man on the boat."

Not quite, because the boat's cook, former Seattle restaurateur Tony Doll, is 58 years old. Most of the Lindsey crew are men in their early to mid-40s - experienced sailors all. Crowley hand-picked every one of them.

Foss, in its $500,000 study of the marketability and imagined capabilities of an "enhanced tractor tug," consulted Crowley. He ran one of the tractor tugs in the Puget Sound trials with tankers. They also sent him to Sullom Voe, the sprawling refinery complex in the Shetland Islands, to see how the Scottish boat operators used their tractor tugs. Crowley's crew likes to tell how their captain reportedly churned the stomachs of his Scottish hosts when he put their North Sea vessels through their paces.

Crowley's crew said he runs a tight but friendly ship. On the Prince William Sound escort trip, he did not hesitate to tell his chief engineer, a man with 18 years of service with Foss, how to coil a bow line. And he sent two men into the spray to tie down a flapping tarp on the Lindsey's skiff.

The ship simply must be the pride of Foss, in part because so many dignitaries - Coast Guard admirals, oil company executives, port commissioners from everywhere - come aboard. Doll made breakfast for 25 people recently.

"You're kind of in the spotlight," said Jack Mulvane, 40, the ship's Boston-bred chief engineer, who has 18 years with Foss. "It's like having a new car. You don't want to make a mistake. We want to look good, because a lot of people are monitoring us."

As the Lindsey accompanied the Prince William Sound on the recent escort, and the BP refinery dock appeared onshore, the tanker pilot again radioed Crowley. The pilot wanted Crowley's help in stopping and pivoting the tanker before he dropped its anchor for the night.

Again, Crowley backed the tug toward the stern of the Prince William Sound. He sat at one of three identical sets of controls in the wheelhouse. One set looks out over the bow. The other two - one on each side of the Lindsey's view-blocking, stainless-steel exhaust stack - face the stern.

Sailor Frank Huber, 45, is forward on the deck, and he eventually heaves to the tanker crew the tug's 10-inch-thick Spectra line, which is made of the same material used to fill bullet-proof vests.

Once the Spectra line is secured to the tanker, Crowley backs the tug away from the tanker's stern. Then he begins veering off to the right. Soon he is several hundred feet from the tanker. The Spectra line snaps taut 30 feet above the water's leaden surface.

The tanker is moving at about 8 knots and actually is towing the lighter tug along.

Soon Crowley moves the Lindsey so that its line is nearly perpendicular to the wheelhouse. With a conventional tugboat, this situation might cause "tripping," in which the overwhelming momentum of the larger tanker simply jerks the tugboat under the water. The Lindsey, its skeg digging deep and its whirring cycloidal units positioned about one-third the hull's length back from the bow, is as stable as a reef. And it's traveling stern first.

"We're like a big ol' rudder out here," said Crowley.

A gauge shows that the Spectra line has 70 tons of tension on it.

The tanker slows to 6 knots, then 4, 3. Then to less than 1 knot - all within about two minutes. All the while, the bow of the Prince William Sound is spinning into position and away from the Lindsey.

In a few minutes the tanker stops.

Its crew tosses a rope ladder over the stern, so the Lindsey can help with one final escort, ferrying the pilot from his ship to the oil-refinery dock.