Steamship Working Through "Bugs" Of New Freight Boat

"My phone blows up every day," Steamship Authority Port Council chair Nat Lowell said on Tuesday, referring to the complaints he's been getting about the boat line's new freight vessel, the M/V Barnstable.

The Port Council got an update Tuesday morning about a host of "bugs" that not only delayed the vessel being put into service last month, but have since caused problems with its speed, the loading of trucks, and its draft being too large under heavy freight loads.

"We need to get this resolved," Steamship general manager Bob Davis said. "We need to be carrying what we expected this vessel to be carrying."

Davis, along with Mark Amundsen, the SSA's director of engineering and maintenance, expressed confidence that all the issues would be resolved in short order. Members of the Port Council urged patience and stated it was not unusual for new vessels to experience these types of troubles in the days and weeks after being put into service.

"At the end of the day, when you have new projects, you're going to have bugs," said Port Council member Eric Dawicki. "And I think for the public's sake, allow the bugs to occur. Sounds like some rate adjustments are being made. Some proactivity is being made. So me, as a ship owner as well, you know when stuff hits the fan, you have to make adjustments...It's really imperative for everybody to be patient, to allow the bugs to be taken care of."

During Tuesday's meeting, Davis detailed the numerous issues that have hampered the M/V Barnstable's introduction to the Steamship Authority's fleet over the past month.

The vessel missed its first few scheduled trips to Nantucket in January after a leak was discovered in a reduction gear lube oil cooler, Davis said. That issue led to the discovery that the Barnstable needed a block heater for its engine to account for the colder temperatures it was operating in.

"These vessels previously operated down in the Gulf and weren't used to having these cold temperatures," Davis said. "So we need to add a block heater to keep the viscosity of the lubricant going."

Both of those issues have since been addressed, and the M/V Barnstable went into service on the Nantucket route in late January. But almost immediately, more problems with the vessel were identified.

There were deck loading problems that resulted in crews needing 40 minutes to get the Barnstable loaded with trucks. While the loading time has quickly decreased as Steamship crews have gotten more familiar with the vessel, the boat line then realized the vessel's draft was too large during trips to Nantucket with especially heavy loads, specifically the first trip to the island in the morning with hazardous materials such as gasoline, limiting what it was legally allowed to carry.

"We have had an issue with the weight - what the draft ends up being of the vessel, with the weight," Davis said. "So essentially, we get somewhere around 650,000 or 700,000 pounds of weight on board, and the stern ends up being over 10 foot, and so it puts it into different operating parameters. So the certificate for the vessel is that it should be just short of a million pounds. So Mark (Amundsen) has been working with the naval architect on solutions on how to be able to adjust the ballast system to be able to account for it."

Amundsen told the Port Council that he expected the Coast Guard would be issuing a new "stability letter" for the vessel on Tuesday, which would allow it to carry its intended cargo weight.

But beyond the loading and draft issues, the Steamship Authority also discovered another problem as the Barnstable made its first trips on the Nantucket route: it was too slow. The boat got underway at 10 to 11.5 knots when the Steamship had been anticipating it would be traveling at 12 to 13 knots. Amundsen attributed the slower speed to the modifications made to the M/V Barnstable when it was being retrofitted and shortened in length at the Alabama Ship Yard to convert it from an offshore supply vessel to a freight ferry. 

"We've taken a 24-foot mid-body section out, and we've shortened the water line," he said. The Steamship is now having the boat maker "adjust the engine horsepower and speed in relation to the pitch. And right now, we're redoing, or re-looking at the map of that profile, which limited our speed. So we expect more tinkering, probably another week of data, and then we're going to have a new program loaded in for the combinator mode on the pitch-speed relationship, and we will be back to our intended 12.5 knot average service speed, which is the goal."

Port Council members emphasized that they hoped the discovery of the problems with the Barnstable would allow the boat line to prevent its two other offshore supply vessels that are currently being retrofitted in Alabama from having the same issues.

Lowell reminded his fellow Port Council members and others at the meeting that the discovery of "bugs" with the M/V Barnstable was not the first time the boat line had issues with a new vessel.

"The bugs are in this, but we had bugs with the Sankaty too," Lowell said of the Steamship's older freight boat. "There were issues with that boat, and now it's here running like it always did...We've got to get the bugs out, but there's a couple of wasp nests that need to be fixed."

The M/V Barnstable is one of three sister ships purchased by the Steamship Authority in 2022 from Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, Louisiana. The vessel, along with the M/V Aquinnah and M/V Monomoy, was converted for use by the Steamship Authority at the Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. The purchase and conversion costs were covered, in part, through an agreement with the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority that yielded $28.1 million in federal funding.

The cost to acquire the three offshore supply vessels and convert them was also scrutinized over the past two years. Each vessel cost just under $6 million, and despite some deep reservations and criticisms of the Steamship Authority’s management, the boat line’s board of governors voted unanimously in April 2023 to pay $27 million to retrofit two out of the three used vessels purchased to replace its aging freight boats. The low bid from an Alabama shipyard to convert the two former offshore supply vessels at a cost of $13.6 million each was significantly higher than the Steamship’s projection of $9 million per boat. The misfire on the cost estimate prompted consternation by some members of the Steamship’s board of governors, but in the end, all members voted to move forward with the vessel conversions.