Cars and Fuel

 As is often the case ships carrying automobiles and ships carrying fuel for cars and trucks were the major arrivals in the Port of Halifax today, May 16.

Cars

An early morning arrival and late afternoon departure was the Grimaldi ConRo Grande Marocco. Name ship of a series of five built by Hyundai Mipo, Ulsan. A 47,636 gt, 25,725 dwt ship it can carry up to 3711 CEU (cars and vans) in 3839 lane meters of RoRo space. It has a capacity of 1276 TEU as well and has two 45 tonne cranes.

The Grande Marocco is one of several Grimaldi Lines ships that bring cars and vans from Italy, It was last here April 4and since then has been to Dvisville, RI, New York, Vigo, Livorno, Civitavecchia, Savona and Gioia Tauro. All that activity has resulted in some rust streaks detracting from the bright yellow Grimaldi trademark hull colour. 

This time the shipy is headed for its normal port of Baltimore now that a shipping channel has been opened.

Unlike last time however the ship does not seem to have any RoRo cargo on the open deck.

Fuel

Although the type of fuel the ship is carrying is unknown, it is likely that the tanker Elka Delos has gasoline, or possibly diesel fuel. The cargo was loaded in Amsterdam for Irving Oil, but the ship will be anchored for a time before moving alongside to unload.

 The Elka Delos is part of the Athens based European Product Carriers Ltd fleet of ten ships. Built in 2005 by Brodosplit, in Split, Croatia. It is a 27,612 gt, 44,598 dwt MidRange chemical and product tanker. Unlike the previous ship, noted above, this one has no signs of rust and all the draft markings, name, tug marks and manifold locations are clearly legible. The ship received a classification survey January 22, so was presumably in drydock and was repainted at the time.  Nevertheless a Port State Inspection in Amsterdam on February 14 revealed ten deficiencies, many of which sounded fairly serious. One wonders why the Owners and Class Society would not have dealt with the issues during drydocking instead. Deficiencies noted by Port State Control usually result in the ship being detained in port, sometimes for several days, until the matters are resolved.