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The International WorkBoat Show returns to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans December 2-4. More than 1,000 exhibitors, upwards of 13,000 attendees, and the one US trade event where the inland, harbor towing, and offshore support segments all show up in the same building. Nord Young will be there. Not exhibiting this year, just walking the floor. The conference program has not been fully published yet, so this is a preview of the exhibit floor rather than a

Every towing vessel subject to Subchapter M holds a Certificate of Inspection, and every COI was obtained through one of two routes. The Coast Guard issues the certificate either way. What differs is who verifies compliance, how often, and on whose schedule. Operators frequently treat this as a procedural detail settled once at the start of the phase-in and never revisited. It is not. The choice determines your annual cost structure, your exposure to scheduling risk, the amou

On July 19, 2024, a deckhand named among the five crew aboard the towing vessel Miss Peggy drowned in the galley of his own boat after it was struck from behind and rolled over in the Houston Ship Channel. Four of his shipmates got out. He did not. The National Transportation Safety Board released its investigation report on August 6, 2026. It runs 92 pages, and the finding at the center of it is one that every safety manager in the industry should read carefully, because it

Most operators treat renewal as a price negotiation. The broker goes to market, quotes come back, and the conversation is about which number is lowest and whether last year's terms can be held. That framing misses where the leverage sits. By the time quotes are being compared, the underwriter has already formed a view of the risk, and that view was built from the loss runs, the survey report, and a set of judgments about how the operation is run. For a small fleet, those judg

Ten years after it took effect, Subchapter M is no longer a new regulation. It is the operating framework for the entire U.S. towing industry, and the phase-in that occupied everyone's attention between 2016 and 2022 is long finished. What has replaced it is a renewal cycle, and that cycle is producing a specific set of problems right now for operators who obtained their first Certificate of Inspection early. Requirements that were deferred for five years are coming due, and