One night about 20 years ago, Greg Conn was on watch in the wheelhouse making a run down the James River in Virginia for the umpteenth time when it suddenly dawned on him. Like many tug captains, he thought about starting his own towing company.
But the big difference between Conn and most tug captains who had similar plans is that he actually pulled it off.
Conn’s Intracoastal Marine, based in Chesapeake, Va., has grown to an eight-boat fleet with 35 employees. Recently, Conn took another leap and ordered two new covered hopper barges from Trinity Marine Products in Madisonville, La., and delivered them using a newly acquired tug he bought in Louisiana and refurbished.
“I started in this business sweeping barges, literally,” said Conn, Intracoastal’s president. “I worked my way up the hawsepipe from the very bottom.” Conn worked in the engine room but was drawn to the wheelhouse. “It didn’t take long to figure out where the air conditioning was.”
Early on, Conn worked as captain of the 25' Little Mary, the smallest pusher tug in the fleet of Eastern Shore Diving and Marine, moving LASH barges in Norfolk harbor. He worked for several tug companies in the Hampton Roads area over the years before he realized his dream in 1995 with the purchase of a tug.
“I had lots of knowledge about the business, but very little business knowledge,” he said. “Those first years were an education.”
The first boat he and his partner purchased was the Cheyenne, a 72' single-screw tug built in 1939.
After working with partners for several years, Conn decided it was time to go solo. “My wife was so nervous about me going out on my own,” he said, “We had put everything on the line, we had no capital, no backing."
The purchase of the 600-hp tug Carolina began a slow and steady progression for Intracoastal Marine. Conn rented space on the Elizabeth River and found plenty of work.
The Carolina, a 39'×21' pusher, is still in the fleet. “We take a great deal of pride in that boat. She is small but able,” said Port Engineer Bill Williams.
After the acquisition of the Hoss in 2004, the company became a true player in the Hampton Roads market. The Hoss was part of the C.G. Willis fleet of pushboats. These 1,800-hp pushboats with Kort nozzles plied the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) from New Jersey to Georgia. At 83'8"×28' with a 30' height of eye, Conn says the Hoss lays claim to the title of the largest pusher homeported in Hampton Roads.
NICHE PLAYER
As the fleet grew, Conn built a team of hawsepipers like himself. “I look for people who want to advance,” he said. “I never hire a deckhand. I hire a potential captain.”
Roger Morgan, Intracoastal Marine’s port captain, followed a similar career path as Conn, but he started in the merchant marine. After settling back onshore, Morgan became a tug captain and also attempted to go it alone. Finding that running a tug company was not for him, he offered his skills to Conn, who quickly made room for him.
“We corroborate well,” said Conn, pointing to the open French doors between their offices. “We can offer customers the benefit of our knowledge and can bounce ideas off each other.”
Conn has leveraged his location at mile zero on the ICW to become a highly competitive player in the Hampton Roads tug market. The company will tow or push almost anything and there is plenty of activity on the waterfront in Norfolk, a major deep-draft port and home of the world’s largest naval base.
Conn has purchased the land he once rented, built an office and developed a repair yard and 600' bulkhead where there was once a junkyard. The bulkhead provides barge-offloading capabilities.
“While this is a competitive marketplace, it is also a closely-knit maritime community,” said Kenny Crofton of Crofton Diving, a Portsmouth, Va., marine construction and commercial diving company founded by Kenny’s father.
“There are many family businesses in this region and we have known one another for years,” said Crofton. “There is a level of trust built into these relationships among the various service providers. We recognize that we need to be able to depend upon one another. Greg is a good example of that. We all have a lot of respect for what he has accomplished.”
Intracoastal is a niche operation, according to Conn. The company fleet mainly operates on the Chesapeake and, as the name suggests, the ICW.
“If we see an opportunity, we move towards it,” he said. “Growing the fleet to eight boats has definite advantages. We have, so far as it is feasible, standardized the vessels so we can take advantage of the economies of scale. It keeps us competitive with larger companies.”
Aside from barging commodities like grain and aggregate, Conn said they once towed a Navy quarters barge to the mouth of the Chesapeake where Naval Special Warfare teams “assaulted” it while underway.
“That was a pretty wild tow. Helicopters were circling over the barge and guys were climbing down ropes onto it,” said Conn. This is the kind of work that keeps the business interesting for Conn. “I get bored to death going back and forth from point A to point B.”
The decision to build two barges at Trinity Marine was another one of Conn’s nervy gambits.
“We identified a need for one of our local customers to replace some of their aging equipment so we went ahead and ordered two new covered hoppers from Trinity,” said Conn.
Intracoastal consulted with Tate Austin, principal surveyor at Norfolk Maritime Surveyors, to make suggestions for modifying a standard inland hopper barge for service in the Chesapeake.
“I advised beefing up the forward rake on the barge to mitigate the pounding it will take in the choppy waters of the bay,” said Tate. “We also discussed a coating system to protect the barge from the salt water.”
He said many inland barges have no coating at all when they are commissioned for service in the river system.
At around the same time, Conn identified a tug for sale that would be both capable of delivering the new barges and rounding out Intracoastal Marine’s fleet.
Williams, the port engineer, went to Allied Shipyard in Larose, La., and spent 46 days working with the yard to update the former Mr. Larry, an 80'×24' model bow tug.
Rechristened the Southern Star, the boat delivered the barges in November and went straight to work in Norfolk.
“We have been as busy as ever this year,” said Conn. “We are a small company and able to adapt quickly to changes in the marketplace. There have been tremendous shifts since I began Intracoastal, and we just keep shifting course to keep up.”
