HaiSea Marine’s first battery-electric harbor tug, HaiSea Wamis[Photograph: Sanmar Shipyards]
HaiSea Marine, majority owned by Haisla Nation in partnership with Seaspan ULC, this week celebrated the arrival of the HaiSea Wamis, the primary absolutely electrical tugboat to affix its new inexperienced fleet, because it sailed underneath Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge for the primary time.
Over the following 12 months, Vancouver North Shore residents will see the HaiSea Wamis carry out missions within the Vancouver Harbor and past. However, they gained’t hear it as a result of the HaiSea Wamis runs on 100% electrical energy and is fast, environment friendly, and quiet.
Delivered in June by Turkey’s Sanmar Shipyard, the HaiSea Wamis is the primary of three fully-electric tugboats to reach in Canada that, mixed with HaiSea’s incoming LNG dual-fuel escort tugs, will make up one of many greenest tugboats fleet on the planet. All the vessels have been designed by Vancouver naval architect agency Robert Allan Ltd and are all being constructed by Sanmar. Once delivered, the fleet will make the voyage up the Douglas Channel to Kitimat the place it will likely be primarily based and supply ship-assist and escort towing companies to LNG carriers calling at LNG Canada’s new export facility within the conventional territory of the Haisla Nation.
“The arrival of the HaiSea Wamis is a special moment for our team and our partners and represents a dream coming true. I look forward to the moment when the Wamis sets sail for Kitimat and boards its first crew of six – all from the Haisla Nation,” mentioned Jordan Pechie, senior vp of Seaspan Marine Transportation.
- For the file, the video declare of a “world first” is a bit over enthusiastic. Turkish tugboat designer Navtek Naval Technologies laid declare to that title that for its first Zeetug (zero-emission electrical tugboat), Gisas Power, delivered in 2020. Even earlier than that, again in 2014, the New York State Canal Corporation refit an 86-year-old tugboat to work as an all-electric dredge tender on the Erie Canal.
