Unalaska, AK – The disabled tanker Golden Seas connected with Coast Guard vessels over the weekend and is now being towed to Dutch Harbor for repairs. The tanker is expected to arrive on Tuesday.

The Golden Seas experienced a turbo-charger failure on December 3 while 70 miles north of Adak, causing the vessel to lose power and go adrift. The ship was transporting Canola seeds from Canada to the United Arab Emirates, and is also carrying about half a million gallons of oil and diesel fuel. Because of the poor weather and the vessel's proximity to shore, there was initial concern that the vessel could run aground and cause an oil spill.

The Golden Seas regained limited power on Friday, allowing the vessel to move away from shoreline at a speed of 3 knots. On Saturday, the Shell-operated icebreaker Tor Viking II reached the Golden Seas and was able to connect a tow line to the vessel. The Tor Viking had been moored in Dutch Harbor as part of Shell's preparation for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea. Normally, the nearest available ocean-going tugs to the region are in Seattle, and it can take over a week for them to travel out to the Aleutian Islands.

Gary Folley is with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, and he says the lack of ocean-going tugs on such a popular shipping route is an issue of concern for the state.

"Is it enough just to have a rescue tug in Dutch Harbor, or do we also need to have one out in Adak or perhaps even in other places?" asked Folley. He also floated the idea of maintaining ocean-going tugs in the region during the winter months, when weather is especially harsh.

Right now, the City of Unalaska is coordinating with the Coast Guard and Shell Oil to bring the disabled vessel into Captains Bay and to limit disruption to other vessel operations. On Saturday afternoon, local officials and representatives from the shipping industry met at city hall for a briefing on the Golden Seas' status. Lt. Mark Labert, from the Coast Guard's Unalaska marine safety detachment, led the meeting.

"We have the current situation and now the planned situation that goes back now into a port of refuge, because we are going to start looking at what tugs we have available and if [the Golden Seas] is going to plan on going dead ship," says Labert. "We're looking at what that does to our operations here commercially and what that's going to mean for us."

Repairs to the Golden Seas are expected to take a week or more.