The Coast Guard cutter James, a 418-foot ship based in Charleston, is scheduled to spend the fall and early winter in dry dock in North Charleston.

The Coast Guard signed a $17.9 million task order Sept. 1 with Detyens Shipyards Inc. to dry-dock and repair the cutter, according to federal spending records. The order’s work period runs from Oct. 14 through Jan. 15, 2027, the records show.

In September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also hired the shipyard for two dry docks: $7.7 million for the fisheries survey ship Pisces, signed Sept. 16, and $6.2 million for the research ship Gordon Gunter, signed Sept. 11, the records show. Both ships are homeported in Pascagoula, Mississippi, according to NOAA.

Together, the three jobs are worth about $31.8 million, according to a Charleston Business Report tally of the records.

A contract with no competition

The James order falls under a contract worth up to $119.8 million, including options, that the Coast Guard awarded Detyens on June 11 to dry-dock its 418-foot cutters homeported in Charleston from fiscal 2026 through 2031. The Coast Guard has four of the cutters, known as national security cutters, based in Charleston, the service said in July. Its contract documents now call them Maritime Security Cutters, Large.

The Coast Guard awarded the contract without competition. In a justification posted with the award, the service said dry dock repairs for the Charleston-based cutters are limited to within 50 miles of their homeport to protect deployment schedules, and that market research showed Detyens is “the only capable provider within a 50 mile radius” of Charleston.

Thirteen companies responded to a March 2025 sources-sought notice or attended an April 2025 industry day, according to the document. Only Detyens could dry-dock one of the cutters within 50 miles of Charleston, the Coast Guard concluded.

Each dry dock done farther away takes 80 days out of a cutter’s operating schedule, the service wrote, or 320 days over the life of the contract. “This reduction cannot be absorbed by the Coast Guard,” the justification says.

The cutters typically go into dry dock once every five years for about 16 weeks, according to the document. Before this contract, the Coast Guard bought that work one cutter at a time.

The first order under the new contract, $26.5 million for the cutter Hamilton, was signed June 22, with work scheduled through Nov. 11, records show.

The arrangement may not be permanent. The Coast Guard is buying new offshore patrol cutters, including an estimated four to be homeported in Charleston, according to the justification. Once more of them reach the East Coast, the service said, the Charleston-based large cutters may be able to travel outside the area for dry dock repairs “without significant mission impacts.”

NOAA ships, too

The 208-foot Pisces, commissioned in 2009, is a fisheries survey ship that works mainly in the Gulf, the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, according to NOAA. The Gordon Gunter, commissioned in 1998, served the Navy as the USNS Relentless before NOAA converted it into a research ship that monitors fish stocks and marine mammals, NOAA says.

The Pisces job was set aside for small businesses and drew four offers, federal records show. The Gordon Gunter job drew two. The Pisces work is scheduled to run through Feb. 21, 2027, and the Gordon Gunter work through Feb. 1.

Detyens has worked on the Pisces before, under a $5.5 million NOAA contract signed in September 2023, records show.

Mostly Navy business

The Navy remains the shipyard’s biggest federal customer. Federal agencies obligated $278.1 million to Detyens in fiscal 2026, which ended Sept. 30, according to USAspending.gov: $218.9 million from the Navy, $44.4 million from the Coast Guard and $14.9 million from NOAA. Defense awards reach that database after a 90-day delay, so the Navy figure may grow.

The largest Navy jobs came through the Military Sealift Command’s headquarters contracting office in Norfolk, Virginia. They included a $44.3 million overhaul and dry docking of the USNS Supply and a $29.8 million post-shakedown availability for the USNS Robert F. Kennedy, an oiler, records show.

Federal obligations to the company have topped $90 million in every fiscal year since 2018, according to USAspending.gov. Federal records list Detyens as a small business.

The shipyard lists four dry docks on its website, the longest 751 feet, along with 8,000 feet of deepwater pier space and 12 cranes.

If the schedules hold, the work on the James will wrap up in mid-January, and both NOAA ships will be finished by late February.