VIDEO: HaiSea Marine celebrates arrival of all-electric tugboat HaiSea Wamis
Written by Nick Blenkey
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 first fully electric tugboat to join its new green fleet, as it sailed under Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge for the first time.
Over the next year, Vancouver North Shore residents will see the HaiSea Wamis perform missions in the Vancouver Harbor and beyond. However, they won’t hear it because the HaiSea Wamis runs on 100% electric power and is quick, efficient, and quiet.
Delivered in June by Turkey’s Sanmar Shipyard, the HaiSea Wamis is the first of three fully-electric tugboats to arrive in Canada that, combined with HaiSea’s incoming LNG dual-fuel escort tugs, will make up one of the greenest tugboats fleet in the world. All the vessels have been designed by Vancouver naval architect firm Robert Allan Ltd and are all being built by Sanmar. Once delivered, the fleet will make the voyage up the Douglas Channel to Kitimat where it will be based and provide ship-assist and escort towing services to LNG carriers calling at LNG Canada’s new export facility in the traditional 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,” said Jordan Pechie, senior vice president of Seaspan Marine Transportation.
- For the record, the video claim of a “world first” is a bit over enthusiastic. Turkish tugboat designer Navtek Naval Technologies laid claim to that title that for its first Zeetug (zero-emission electric tugboat), Gisas Power, delivered in 2020. Even before that, back 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.
