An interesting month of December 2023 without any doubt was the surprised port of call of the 2023 newbuilt tug MONTERRICO that entered Grand Harbour (La Valletta as the Italians say), Malta during Week 50 that had to enter due to weather conditions happening in the area.
Berthed at DWQ 3 and crewed by the Redwise Maritime Services BV who has been doing ship delivery since 1906 she was built in Turkey as the MED XLVII at the Eregli Shipyard in Turkey as part of the Med A2360 series to a Robert Allan RAmparts 2300 design to handle large ships at the expanding port of Puerto Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala and will be homeported at Puerto Quetzal once she’s commissioned.
She’s 25.02 metres long (loa) with a beam of 11 m, bollard pull of 60 tonnes and a speed of 13 knots. Her propulsion consists of twin Caterpillar 3512 E engines, each delivering 1,771 kW at 1,800 rpm driving two azimuth thrusters and two generator sets each producing 93.6 kW at 1,500 rpm.
The owners , Arrendadora Continental selected the Med A2360 tug for its operational versatility, for ship escort into terminals and for harbour towage of which Med Marine added a FiFi fire-fighting system for emergency response in terminals and on ships.
And unfortunately once again the courtesy flag (Country’s National Flag) wasn’t flown. Instead the Merchant Flag of Malta (Maritime Flag) was flew that was introduced by the Merchant Shipping Act (Cap.234) for all vessels homeported at Malta.
