Master Boat Builders, Coden, Ala., has launched Defiant, the third of eight RApport 2700-MP tugs under construction for Maritime Partners, Metairie, La., as the first two vessels in the series enter service with E.N. Bisso & Son, New Orleans.
Defiant was launched in August and is scheduled for delivery to Maritime Partners this fall, Master Boat Builders told WorkBoat. The tug is now progressing through final completion work.
The shipyard confirmed that Defiant carries the same configuration and propulsion package as sister tugs Marauder and Titan. An operator for Defiant has not yet been identified.
The 88'×43' RApport 2700-MP design was developed by Robert Allan Ltd., Vancouver, B.C., for ship-assist and escort work. Main propulsion is provided by twin Caterpillar 3516E engines, each rated at 3,500 hp at 1,800 rpm, driving Steerprop Z-drives supplied by Karl Senner LLC.
The tugs are designed for more than 90 metric tons of bollard pull and a top speed of about 13 knots. Each is equipped with a Markey Machine 75-hp electric hawser winch and accommodations for a crew of six.
Master Boat Builders president Garrett Rice previously told WorkBoat that the series was designed to give Maritime Partners flexibility to place the vessels with operators working across different ports and service profiles.
“We tried to design this as an extremely versatile tug,” Rice said in April. “It could do escort work in Houston or ship assist in Norfolk or Miami or San Diego, wherever it needed to go. The balance of the stability and escort performance meets in the middle of all the requirements that any customer could have.”
That flexibility is now being put into service with the first two vessels in the series.
E.N. Bisso & Son, New Orleans, has added Marauder and Titan to its tug fleet under a charter arrangement with Maritime Partners. The company operates more than 30 harbor tugs across eight ports in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
The recent delivery of Titan marked the second tug in the series delivered by Master Boat Builders to Maritime Partners.
“The addition of Titan and Marauder strengthens our ability to serve customers in the ports we service with the reliability, safety, and operational excellence they expect from E.N. Bisso,” said Matt Holzhalb, president and CEO of E.N. Bisso. “These vessels expand our fleet capacity and position us to meet growing demand while continuing our long tradition of supporting commerce at U.S deep water ports.”
Both vessels are classed as A1 Escort Tugs and Towing Vessels and carry automated machinery, underwater inspection, firefighting, and low-emissions notations.
Maritime Partners, a vessel finance and leasing company with a fleet of more than 1,950 vessels, structured the charter with E.N. Bisso. The company primarily owns and finances vessels rather than operating them directly, a factor that helped shape the tug series around a standardized design that could serve multiple operators.
“Every tug operator has their own preferences and their own way of doing things,” Rice told WorkBoat earlier this year. “We’ve built for a lot of different operators over the years, and we’ve learned a ton from all of them. So with this project, we were able to take the things that made sense from different operators and blend them into one specification.”
Five additional tugs remain in the eight-vessel program following the launch of Defiant.
