A ship — make that boat — came up the harbour and met its new family yesterday.
The new $15million Port Otago tug Otepoti arrived in the Otago Harbour yesterday morning after a 6070 nautical mile trip from inland China.
The boat was built in the Damen Changde shipyard in Hunan, so it was a long trip to Dunedin, although they made good time.
The boat left the shipyard on December 23, travelling via inland waterways to Zhangjiangang, which it left on January 10.
The tug was met at the head of the harbour by Port Otago’s two other tugs, Taiaroa and Arihi, pilot boat Te Rauone and dredge New Era.
Piper Oe Hayward welcomed the tug to Dunedin, playing his pipes at Taiaroa Head as the tug moved into the harbour.
The tug is a key piece of infrastructure which will allow the port to be big-ship capable.
Port Otago marine and infrastructure general manager Grant Bicknell said the port had an ‘‘always open’’ strategy.
Bigger 10,000TEU (20 equivalent units) ships are on the horizon.
‘‘They are not around at the moment, but the industry is talking about them possibly coming [to] this part of the world and we just want to make sure that we have the capability to take them.
‘‘There was no definite timeline on when they would arrive, but we’re gradually getting ready for them.’’
The Rio ship class which calls carries 6000-8000TEU.
Tug Taiaroa, which arrived in 2014, and Ōtepoti both possess Damen 70-tonne bollard pulls to manoeuvre the ships into position.
Mr Bicknell said everything went well and the new tug arrived on the day it was supposed to.
Some training would be carried out on the new tug next week and it would then get the official sign-off from Maritime NZ.
