Big and Small

 A brand new big container ship and a small general cargo ship bracketed the port today, June 22, with an auto carrier and a cruise ship forming the middle of the sandwich.

The CMA CGM Cedrus was delivered in January by the Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) Ltd as the first of six ships of the same design. It is a 154,598gt, 150,047 dwt ship with a nominal capacity of 15,254 TEU, although this is reduced to 10,100 TEU if all are loaded to 14 tonnes. There are also 1800 reefer points.

The ship featues the usual "island" bridge configuration of larger container ships with the bridge and accommodation well forward (directly above the letter "M" in the photo) and engines aft. It also has lashing bridges on deck to reduce the likelihood of losing containers overside.

On sailing this afternoon the ship took the western channel with two tethered tug escorts aft and one tug on the port side well forward.

 Oh and did I mention that the ship is LNG powered? CMA CGM is loosing no opportunity to promote the fact that the ship (and its five following sister ships) use LNG as fuel. They store the LNG in 14,000 cubic meter tanks, which gives the ships a long range as refueling locations are still few and far between.

Autoport hosted a familiar carrier the Morning Concert which arrived yesterday and sailed this afternoon. Built in 2006 by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan, South Korea the 57,415 gt, 21,279 dwt ship has a capacity of 6,645 cars. Although owned by EUKOR, it is managed by Wilhelmsen Lines Car Carriers. EUKOR (EUrope KOrea) Car Carriers, is owned 20% by Hyundai and Kia, 40% by Wilhelm Wilhelmsen (Norway) and 40% by Wallenius Lines (Sweden).

And on the Halifax side at Pier 22 it was the return of the Viking Star. With a "modest" passenger capacity of 930 with 602 crew, the 47,842 gt ship was built in 2015 by Fincantieri, Merghera, Italy and called in Halifax for the first time October 10, 2016. It is certainly one of the cleaner looking, and to my mind more elegant, of the newer ships. It also caters only to adults (no one under 18) and has no novelty features.

The two smaller ships sailed before the CMA CGM Cedrus got underway, giving the large ship lots of room.

The other ship that bracketed the port today arrived at Pier 9C this morning from Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Douwe-S flies the flag of the Netherlands and a "company" flag carrying the word Zuzama which does not seem to tally with the managers of record, Steenstra Shipping, nor owners Douwe-S Motorschip BV.

Built in 2011 by Zhejiang Shipbuilding and Repair in Wenling, China, it is a gearless general cargo ship of 2862 gt, 4114 dwt. It does carry a traveling gantry to lift and stack the hatch covers. It appears to be ice rated as it has a sharp cut away bow below the water line and a very large ice knife aft.

As noted in my June 3, 2024 post, the aircraft component manufacturer Spirit Aerosystems has begun to charter ships to ferry major components to Halifax due to heavy demand, possibly from Boeing. Atlantic Container Line previously carried the cargo as RoRo and still does carry some other materials for Airbus, but I am told they could not guarantee space for the larger fuselages. I am being a bit vague about this as I cannot verify it in detail.

 

A mobile crane from J.D.Irving was set up at Pier 9C to offload the ship's cargo.

If all of the above is not enough, there was some interesting tug activity at the IEL dock in Dartmouth, which is covered in today's Tugfax post.

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