This choice has to be made fre­quent­ly when a ves­sel (lak­er or saltie) arrives at or sails from a har­bor, port or ter­mi­nal: Should you use an assist tug? Some­times, because of manda­to­ry assist poli­cies in place or for a spe­cif­ic berth or set of con­di­tions, the deci­sion has already been made. But this is the excep­tion. Most of the time, for bet­ter or worse, it’s left up to the mariner’s judg­ment. It’s the clas­sic “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” sce­nario. Com­pa­nies and cus­tomers gen­er­al­ly want to keep costs at a min­i­mum, but they also want a vir­tu­al guar­an­tee of safety.

That means no inci­dents, no injuries and no dam­ages. There is an inher­ent, unre­solv­able con­flict between the two. And nev­er for­get the wild­card in this equa­tion — ves­sel oper­a­tor ego. When that gets in the way of clear think­ing (Assist tug? You want an assist tug? We don’t need no stink­ing assist tug!), car­nage may ensue. Regard­less, there are sev­er­al vari­ables that must be con­sid­ered and planned for each time a ves­sel arrives at or departs from a har­bor, port or ter­mi­nal: the draft/freeboard, trim and weight of the ves­sel, the han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ves­sel, wind direc­tion and veloc­i­ty, cur­rent direc­tion and strength, prox­im­i­ty of oth­er berths and whether they are occu­pied or emp­ty. If they’re occu­pied, what size is the ves­sel or vessels?

Oth­er vari­ables include dock con­fig­u­ra­tion, includ­ing the types and loca­tions of the moor­ing fit­tings, and water depths at and sur­round­ing the berth. Is it a T‑dock, fin­ger pier or face dock? What kind of dock fend­ers? Are line han­dlers required or, if not, are they avail­able? If they are avail­able, is the line han­dler capa­ble of safe­ly tak­ing or let­ting go your lines in the pre­dict­ed conditions?

That’s before you even con­sid­er the assist tug itself. What is its size, hull type, horse­pow­er, clutch-delay, maneu­ver­abil­i­ty, is it con­ven­tion­al or trac­tor, and what’s the tug operator’s skill and expe­ri­ence lev­el? All of the afore­men­tioned are rel­e­vant and nec­es­sary con­sid­er­a­tions, and some of this infor­ma­tion will not be avail­able to you. Yes, it’s a lot to think about, but you must do this if you want to come and go qui­et­ly and with­out incident.

Source: Mod­i­fied from Workboat.com