World Photo by Andy Rossback Giddings Boat Works employee Casey Schleth cleans tracks under the 110-foot Teclutsa. The tugboat, owned by Coos Bay Towboat, rolled off the tracks Thursday night after two weeks of upgrades which included a new paint job.
CHARLESTON — If the Teclutas were a fish, it would be dead. The 110-by-30-foot tugboat has been on dry land for two weeks, but it’s been reborn with a slick new paint job from Giddings Boat Works in Charleston.
The tug is one of four boats in Coos Bay Towboat’s fleet, Captain Jeffery Palmer explained.
The company bought the former U.S. Navy tugboat three years ago. It’s been a work in progress ever since. ‘It was a mothballed Navy tug,” George Wales, the company’s pilot-in-training, said. ‘It was bad — rough.”
37 years young
The boat made its Naval debut in 1973 as The Pawhuska. ‘This one was mainly up in Bremerton pushing around aircraft carriers and submarines,” Wales said. It’s equipped with special rubber coating to push the low-lying subs.
‘We got it still in the Navy colors,” he said. ‘We bought it because the hull was in good shape.” Now it pushes commercial ships that average 40,000 pounds into port. ‘It’s one of the biggest boats in the bay,” Palmer said.
‘This thing was built to push stuff.”
