The Pushy Cat and the Stan Tug 1 became extremely popular, particularly in the dredging and marine construction industries. Early examples of both are still in operation and are a tribute to those original designs. 

Although over four decades Damen has evolved into a massive shipbuilding group, it maintains a very close relationship with its clients in the towage, dredging and marine construction industries. In that way the company continually reacts to feedback from its customers and progressively refines established designs and introduces new vessels to meet the operators’ demands. That is especially true of the Damen Stan Tug range in which almost every vessel has been replaced or modernised in recent years.

The smaller tug/workboats in the Stan Tug are the latest vessels to receive the attention from the Damen Tugs & Workboats project team. After careful studies and market research it was decided to discontinue the Pushy Cat 1204 series and the Stan Tug 1404 and offer one brand new design in their place, the Damen Stan Tug 1205.

The new Stan Tug 1205 design has benefited greatly from the considerable knowledge and experience gained while producing the new Stan Tug 1606 and Stan Tug 1907. Both were developed from earlier highly successful vessels built by Damen in large numbers. Many features inherent in the Stan Tug 1606 in particular have been incorporated in the new 12m tug/workboat. During the design process all of the following matters were addressed; hull design, including full scale testing and calculations for structural strength, fatigue, natural frequencies and wave profile; optimisation of the propulsion system; noise levels and speed and bollard pull performance.

As a direct result of that work the Stan Tug 1205 evolved, a small, very compact and powerful vessel with clean lines and many of the distinctive features in common with its larger sisters. In its basic form the tug/workboat is designed to carry out towing, mooring, transportation of passengers and pilotage duties. The first vessel was completed in late 2009 and has been subjected to extensive trials and testing all of which confirmed and in many cases exceeded expectations.

The Stan Tug 1205 is a twin-screw vessel, measuring 13.08m in length overall, with a maximum beam of 5.28m, a depth (at sides) of 2.30m an approximate draft (aft) of 2.00m and a displacement of approximately 55 tonnes. Under Bureau Veritas rules the vessel is classed 1+HULL. MACH, Seagoing launch.