GBL Christens The Mv. Whit Golding

For Austin Golding, president and CEO of Vicksburg, Miss.-based Golding Barge Line (GBL), the October 28 christening of the mv. Whit Golding was a special moment, not just in the history of the company, but in his experience as a dad. The Whit Golding, the highest horsepower boat the company has ever built, is named for Golding’s older son.

“He got to bust the bottle on it and everything, so he was pumped,” Golding said of the 4-year-old Whit. “He stood on top of it and was ready to go, so he did a great job.”

Golding said when the plan was put in place for the mv. Whit Golding, which Port Arthur, Texas-based Vessel Repair delivered just over a year ago, young Whit was just a toddler.

“He was too young to really conceptualize what it meant that the boat was going to have his name on it, and even what a towboat was,” Golding said. “But going from two to four years old, a lot of maturity happens. I’d say over the last 12 to 18 months he really embraced having a boat with his name on it. We keep up with where it is, and we call it and talk to the captain. He’s very aware of it now.”

Golding said one thing the christening of the mv. Whit Golding really drove home for him was how special his family’s connection to the river industry really is.

“Having a boat named after my grandfather, my mom, my grandmother, my dad, my brother, me and several of my non-immediate family has been a great way to preserve a lot of our family’s legacy,” Golding said. “For me to name one after [Whit], it’s pretty cool to have three generations of our family named within the fleet here.”

Golding was 10 years old when his father, Steve, started Golding Barge Line in 1995. Steve Golding remains the company’s chairman. The family’s roots in the river, Austin Golding said, go even deeper than that.

“Before Golding Barge Line, he had Old Man River Towing that my family and some other families started in the early ‘60s,” Golding said. “He slowly became majority owner of that business and sold it to Kirby in ‘91. That company was about a quarter of the size we are now.”

Golding Barge Line now operates a fleet of 66 barges and 31 towboats, of which the Sterling Marine-designed mv. Whit Golding is the biggest yet. The 4,500 hp. Whit Golding measures 140 by 40 feet, with a 12-foot depth. The triple screw vessel has Caterpillar 3512 Tier 4 main engines mated to Reintjes 773 reduction gears from Karl Senner. Those engines and gears turn open wheel Sound propellers through 8-inch shafts that feature Simplan seals and Thordon bearings.

The mv. Whit Golding also features a retractable pilothouse, and while that might set it apart from most of the inland towboat fleet in the United States, it fits right in with the GBL fleet, which includes eight other retractables. Golding said that’s intentional.

“We’ve always liked the versatility of a retractable,” Golding said. “We’ve found they give us a lot of, not only geographical versatility, but a lot of operational versatility, too.”

Golding said having a single deck streamlines maintenance aboard a retractable towboat. GBL crew members, Golding said, tend to like and request the company’s retractables. While the Whit Golding will operate mainly on the Lower Mississippi River, its horsepower and variable air draft offer the company a lot of flexibility.

“It can go anywhere and do anything,” Golding said.

The company also has a good number of Caterpillar 3512s aboard its other towboats, so there’s a lot of redundancy across the fleet. The higher horsepower, Golding said, allows pilots aboard the Whit Golding to throttle back a bit and gain some fuel efficiency.

“What we can accomplish in the middle of the horsepower curve is a lot better than what we accomplish at the top of the horsepower curve, for sure,” Golding said. “And I think, from a safety standpoint, we like our guys to have a little extra to get out of a jam or get out of a bad spot quicker if they need to.”

This isn’t Golding Barge Line’s first boat from Vessel Repair. Golding said that ongoing relationship between GBL and Vessel Repair is all about relationship and results.

“I think Kurt and Ron Moerbe are real craftsmen and real artists,” Golding said. “When it comes to boats, they have great care for detail. They really do a very good job at taking care of the quality and the strength of the boat. They have a real versatile ability to build a lot of different styles of boats, and the crews they have on the ground that do the delicate stuff are the best we’ve ever dealt with. The woodwork, the piping, a lot of the electrical, it drives away from the shipyard ready to go.”

GBL recently took delivery of another boat from Vessel Repair, the mv. Scott Golding, named for Golding’s younger son, who’s still an infant. Golding plans to wait to christen the mv. Scott Golding until his son is old enough to remember it, he said. The mv. Kirsten Golding, named for Golding’s wife, was also built at Vessel Repair.

The christening of the mv. Whit Golding was done “on the fly,” which is a GBL tradition.

“For this one, we had about a week’s notice and worked to get the timing right where we could make it happen,” Golding said. “Magnolia Marine did us a real solid and let us use their dock here in Vicksburg. We really appreciate them letting us use their dock for the christening. We kept it small, with just GBL employees, close friends and family, and kept it quick.”

Golding also offered thanks for Rev. Winston Rice, who said a prayer of blessing for the mv. Whit Golding and its crew, and for the crew, which had the boat in ship shape and got it back to work shortly after the christening.

Vessel Specs

The mv. Whit Golding has tankage for 64,700 gallons of fuel, 11,700 gallons of potable water and 4,800 gallons of diesel exhaust fluid for the Tier 4 engines. Service power comes from a pair of John Deere generators. The vessel’s keel coolers are by East Park Radiator. Alarms are by Gulf Coast Air & Hydraulics, and the Whit Golding’s steering system is by Custom Hydraulic. The vessel features a full package of Furuno electronics.

On deck, the Whit Golding features four Patterson deck winches, fendering by Schuyler and paint from PPG. Inside, the White Golding has accommodations for 10 arranged in five staterooms, with three bathrooms.

Shoreside and aboard GBL’s fleet of towboats, the company has about 360 employees.

“That’s a lot larger company than we ever expected to grow into,” Golding said. “We’re very blessed, and we consider it a milestone for us to get to this point. I’m just really thankful for the team and everybody at Golding Barge Line for supporting us, working alongside us and sticking with us through good and bad markets to get to where we are.”

Featured photo caption: The Golding family, including John Reid (left), Steve, Melody, Kirsten, Scott, Austin and Whit, for whom the mv. Whit Golding is named.