Colle Maritime Company, a joint venture between Signet Maritime Corporation and Colle Towing Company, has been awarded a twenty-year contract to provide marine support services to Angola LNG Supply Services (ALSS) in the Port of Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The Signet/Colle joint venture will construct two RAstar 3100 Class Terminal Support/Escort Tugs to fulfill this important contract. The tugs, designed by Robert Allan Ltd. of Vancouver, BC, will each provide 80 metric tonnes of bollard pull. Construction will commence immediately at Trinity Offshore in Gulfport, Mississippi with both tugs being built to American Bureau of Shipping XA1 Towing and Escort Service, Fire Fighting Vessel Class 1 (Fi-Fi 1), and XAMS Standards.
The RAstar 3100 tugs were designed exclusively for this Signet-Colle project, and measure 100 ft long, 40 ft beam at deck, and have a moulded depth of 18 ft. The operating draft is 17.2 ft. Main engines for the new tugs comprise a pair of new Caterpillar Model C175-16 diesel engines, each rated 2550 kW (3417 bhp) at 1,800 rpm. These drive a pair of Rolls-Royce model US 255 Z-drives, with 2800 mm OD controllable pitch propellers. The combination will deliver 80 tonnes BP ahead and over 75 tonnes astern.