Canada’s Most Powerful Tugboat Protected with Ecospeed

Groupe Ocean has selected Ecospeed, a non-toxic, hard, long-lasting coating with very high abrasion resistance, perfectly suited for ice-going vessels of all types, for The TundRA 100, the most powerful harbor tug ever to be built in Canada.

The new TundRA 100 tug built by Ocean was designed by Robert Allan Ltd., naval architects and marine engineers.

2012 marked the beginning of construction of the harbor and escort tug, an as-yet unnamed TundRA 100 tugboat, the most powerful tug ever to be built in Canada.

The new Ocean TundRA 100 is 34.2 m/112’ 2” long with an overall breadth of 13 m/42’ 6” and a 6.5 m/21’ 4” draft. With a double Z-Drive propulsion system, powered by two MAK 9M25 engines, the tug will have a total power output of 6,000 kW/8,160 bhp and a top speed of 12.5 knots. The tug has an ice class classification of 1 AS FS.

The coating used on the hull is very important for a number of reasons, as Patrick Chabot, Director of the fleet explains: “We have a lot of experience with hard coatings, mostly epoxy. However, with the ice conditions in our area, the protection of the vital parts of the hull such as welding seams, rudders or cavitation-prone area was not adequate or sufficient to meet the docking intervals.” Ocean have also tried specialized ice-going hard coatings but found that, “the special application requirements make it very expensive under cold temperatures.”

Ecospeed has been certified as an ice abrasion resistant coating which allows a reduction in scantlings of 1 mm on ice-going vessels where Ecospeed is used as the hull coating. Philippe Filion, Director of Public Affairs and Business Development explains, “In order to have a better coating suitable for ice and to limit our environmental footprint, we introduced Ecospeed in 2011. We completed two tugs and are working on another one at this moment (the TundRA 100). At this time, this system looks right for us.”

Based on the success that Ocean had with the first two Ecospeed applications, Ecospeed was chosen as the coating for the new TundRA 100 tug.

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Press Release, November 21, 2013