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I asked a friend at Seattle’s Pacific Maritime Institute(PMI) if she thought someone like me could successfullycomplete just one maneuvering task in their tug simulatorafter a couple hours of training. Ten years ago I’d run acutter aground in San Francisco Bay when my OfficerCandidate class was let loose in the Coast GuardAcademy’s simulator, but that was the extent of myshiphandling experience, real or virtual. As a testament toher optimism, my friend scheduled me in PMI’s Z-drivetug simulator last January under the instruction ofCaptain Jeff Slesinger, author of ASD Tugs: Thrust andAzimuth, Learning to Drive a Z-drive. Since, no one wascounting on me to actually pass a test, it didn’t matter howI did, I told myself. But when I walked into Jeff ’s class-room, after official classes were over for the day, he com-

mented on the performance anxiety I was obviously car-rying with me.

“That’s what the simulator is for. It’s a safe place to makemistakes,” he told me. “If you’re not making mistakes inthere, you’re not learning.”

THIRTY-ONE YEARS IN THE BUSINESS

Jeff has been in the tug industry for thirty-one years andhas worked at Western Towboat for the past 25. He haspublished two books on tug handling, owns his own busi-ness and does training at PMI.

“I first started to learn how to sail when I was seven. Iwas bitten by the bug right then and wanted to make myliving running boats. I was involved with the sailingindustry, teaching sailing and delivering sail boats.” But

Captain Jeff Slesinger, trainer and author.

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By Raina Clark

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Training on

Z-Driveswith Jeff Slesinger

early on Jeff realized he wanted to run tugs. “In my early20s I started accumulating sea time in order to get mylicense.” He started gathering time on fishing vessels.“Once I got enough I sat for my license and got my firstofficial tug boat job in 1980.”

“When I came into the towing industry I’d already oper-ated other vessels as a captain, although not any towingvessels. I spent about the first couple months as the mate.Then the captain I was with needed to go ashore to takecare of his family. We had developed a very close relation-ship and he thought I had what it took to be a captain, sohe recommended me and I slid into his job in relativelyshort order.”

“I was a full-time captain from 1980 through about1998 and at that point I started to transition and assume

more duties ashore, training people, managing day to dayoperations and that sort of thing.”

“I ended up training some of the captains here atWestern Towboat as well as some captains and mates out-side of Western Towboat. Early in 2005 I began an associ-ation with the Pacific Maritime Institute which has beenvery good for me and I hope very good for them. I’ve beendoing some customized training projects for them specifi-cally oriented to operating tugs.”

“Delphi Maritime is my own company. Its basic focus istwo things. One is the training side of things, developingonboard and shore-side training programs for tugs, andthe other is a marine surveying and audit business. Thetraining is very specific to boat handling, barge handlingand watchstanding on tugs.”

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A CHANGING INDUSTRY: FROM BARGE JOCKEYS TO

ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGERS

Jeff gave me a basic primer on Z-drives in his emptyclassroom and told me my final task for the evening wouldbe to bring a Z-drive tug alongside a tanker moving atabout seven knots in the simulated waters outside a virtu-al Port of Seattle. Then I would aspire to make contactwith the ship without causing any damage. It all soundedvery impressive and I can understand why tug handlinghas an almost obsessive appeal. However, as Jeff explainedlater on, those who are attracted to the business because ofthis kind of action may get a reality check when they findout that driving the boat is actually a small part of being atug captain.

His own infatuation with the business goes way back.“The guys and gals who handle tugboats, they held theirboat handling art to a high level. To use not only thehorsepower in the engine room, but the horsepower in thewheelhouse; I was just very smitten with that challengeand I’m still trying to figure out a way to perfect it.” Thepeople who are attracted to the industry, he said, “want todrive the boat, everybody on there, whether it’s a deckhand, a mate or a captain. The truth of it is, now thatpiece of the job has really diminished. For many reasonsand many of them are good reasons.”

The challenge that attracted many people to towing isthe ability to manage risk in their jobs he said. “It’s notthat we’re dare devils or that we seek to be reckless. But welike to be presented with a situation, like you were, com-ing alongside that ship,” Jeff told me. “There’s riskinvolved with that. When you were doing your exercise in

the simulator, if that had been real-life, if you had madejust one or two mistakes, you would have plowed into thatship, possibly causing damage. There have been cases withthat maneuver you did, where people whack into the ship,maybe they bust something up, and then they can’tmaneuver and they slide back down the hull and gounderneath the stern of the ship. That kind of stuff hashappened. That risk is always there.”

Fortunately, Jeff said, “the difference between 30 yearsago and today is that we have more powerful tugs, bettertrained people and more consistent quality equipment,and that has built in an extra margin of safety. We’vemoved away from the edge.”

Along with the margin of safety, boat culture and thecaptain’s job description have also changed. “You know,when I first started out, we operated as independent units.It was very much a silo approach. When you went on aboat, especially as a captain, that was your tug and youhad relatively limited communications back to shore. Youbasically went out and did your job and came back. Aslong as you did it successfully and didn’t have any prob-lems, that’s all people expected and that’s all they reallyknew.”

“It was very boat-centric,” Jeff said. “There was no cohe-siveness as an industry. You were out there doing yourthing.”

But equipment improved and was more consistentlymaintained. Then procedures became more standardizedwithin the industry as a whole. “That’s when you saw thedevelopment of safety management systems being imple-mented by towing companies.”

Raina’s instructor for the day, Captain Jeff Slesinger, in the PMItug simulator in Seattle, Wash.

Raina Clark behind the controls of a simulated Z-drive tug atPMI in Seattle, Wash.

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“It started to add an administrativeaspect to being a tugboat captain.When I first started there wasn’t anyadministrative aspect. You were sup-posed to be a good barge jockey, agood boat handler and that was it.But as things progressed and theindustry started to evolve there wasmore of an administrative aspect thatstarted to creep into the job.”

Next the industry wanted to bemore consistent in the way peoplewere trained. “That training elementthen started to come aboard, whichalso became part of what a captain ona tug has to do these days. At first wejust attempted to do this by throwingout topics which we knew peopleshould know about: how to land abarge, how to handle a tug, how toland down river in fair tide, thingslike that. But we didn’t really givecaptains the tools to be good teachersor good trainers.”

“So that was the next phase.” Theindustry began to recognize that a lotwas being asked of these captains.“They’re just not driving the boat anymore. They’re actually business man-agers on board. They’re personnelmanagers.

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First task, learn to drive between thebuoys: the PMI tug simulator in Seattle,Wash.

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32 MN March 2011

They head an administrative department and, oh by theway, now we’d also like them to lead the onboard trainingdepartment. They were adding more and more layers ofresponsibilities, especially to captains.”

“So the difference between now and 30 years ago; nowa-days the boat handling aspect is probably 10 percent ofwhat a captain does.”

TUG HANDLING: A PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Before we stepped into the simulator, Jeff told me one ofthe first concepts I had to wrap my head around — driv-ing the boat from the stern. Which way the back endshould swing in a turn was my first consideration, he toldme. Inside the simulator he had me do serpentinesthrough a line of buoys, using a couple different methodsto maneuver the tug with the thrusters. We started in myhappy place with both thrusters pointed perpendicular,away from the boat, effectively creating an anchor ofchurning water underneath the tug.

“You can always come back here if you need to,” Jeffassured me.

With one thruster continuing to stabilize the boat thisway, I used the other to gently push my stern to port orstarboard, threading the boat in between the buoys. Isometimes had to hold my free hand in front of my faceand move the heel of my palm to visualize which way thethruster needed to push the stern of the boat. Next Jeffshowed me the feathering technique using both hands onthe thrusters. From my happy place I moved boththrusters in slightly, toward parallel, and the boat movedforward. Move one thruster in farther than the other andthe back end began to swing. The closer to parallel Imoved the thrusters, the faster the scenery went by.

In the simulator, Jeff gave me just a few of the tricks ofthe trade which he said represented a gap in the nauticalliterature out there. “You can find lots of books written onthe historical aspects of the marine industry, the theoreti-cal aspects — the physics of how ships or tugs move andhow they’re propelled, with very scientific definitions.”Jeff said both the books he’s written are intended to bridgethe gap between the theoretical and how you actuallyapply that knowledge when you’re on the job.

His first book, Shiphandling with Tugs, “was almost acomplete re-write of a book by George H. Reid. GeorgeReid was a pioneer of this type of book for towing vessels.He wrote Primer of Towing. That was the first book forthe towing industry that said ‘if you want to go alongsidea barge, here’s how you do it, here’s how you play thewind, here’s how you put the rudder over,’ all that stuff. Iwas very grateful to be asked to re-write his book.”

Jeff ’s most recent book, ASD Tugs: Thrust andAzimuth, Learning to Drive a Z-drive, focuses specificallyon this modern type of tug. “It is the prevalent towing ves-sel produced in the world today. There’s really no bookout there, that I’ve found, that serves as a guide to thelearning process to be able to drive one of these things.”The book covers the basic elements of maneuvering anASD tug, through steering, speed, turning, stopping, hov-ering and lateral movement and has 120 drawings ofmaneuvering principles.

“Again, I go back to the simulation that you did whenyou came alongside the ship. There are tons of books writ-ten that say when you come alongside a ship, certainhydrodynamic things are going to happen. When youcome up to the bow of the ship you’re going to get pushedaway. When you go to the stern of the ship you’re going toget sucked in. They’ll go through long diagrams and for-

Cover of Slesinger’s latest book.

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mulas to show you how all thesehydrodynamics work. That’s animportant piece of knowledge to have,there’s no doubt about it. But if I hadjust told you that as you were trying tocome alongside that ship, it wouldn’thave helped you much. The next pieceis to tell you little tricks that I havelearned and others have learned abouthow to incorporate that knowledgeinto a practical application. So when Itold you, pick a spot on the ship andlook to the side and use that as yourvisual reference for whether you’recreeping up on the ship or back downon the ship; Now you’ve got this littlereference point so you can automati-cally react to it. That’s the kind ofthing that the two books I’ve writtentry to communicate.”

VIRTUAL SUCCESS

In the simulator I used the feather-ing technique Jeff taught me tomaneuver the tug as a big redCanadian Steamship tanker appearedin my starboard windows. I tried topace the tanker as Jeff instructed,picking the first S in “Steamship” asmy point of reference. I started mov-ing up too fast, so I feathered thethrusters back. Now we were too farbehind. I tried to inch forward, moreslowly this time, but passed my markagain. At this point I was too close tothe tanker, so I angled away from theship and started the dance all over.

“You’re doing well,” Jeff told me.“Of course the pilot is up on thetanker deck getting impatient,” headded, probably wanting to get hometo family and out of the cold. That’swhat the Association gets for hiring amagazine editor to pick up their pilot,I thought. In another few minutes Ifinally made gentle contact with thetanker hull and Jeff called it a success,since no one actually said anythingabout a time limit on the exercise.