Comings and Goings

 Among the arrivals and departures today, November 26, were some ships of note:

1  The H Cygnus arrived from Port Newark (New York harbour) for ZIM's newly merged service combining the North America to South America West Coast line, the Colibri Express, with the Halifax / New York/ Kingston, Jamaica feeder ZCX.

As expected the ship is carrying a large number of reefers as temperature controlled and frozen foods form a large part of the trade from South America. The ship was built in 2022 by Jiangsu Yangzi Xinfu Shipbuilding in Jingjiang, China. It is the first in a series of at least seven ships built by the yard as their 1800 TEU class of feeders. The ship measures 18,848 gt, 24,480 dwt with an actual capacity of 1781 TEU. (I haven't been able to find the number of reefer plugs, but I expect several hundred.) Sister ship and fleet mate H Mercury called here October 9 and November 13.

2   Among departures was a very short term visitor. The Asian Spirit arrived from New York late afternoon yesterday, November 25, and sailed mid-afternoon today for Montreal. I don't know if it loaded or unloaded cargo, but I suspect it was a bunker stop.

It is classed as a "multi-purpose heavy lift" ship, built as part of the Beluga Shipping fleet in 2006. Construction began at the Damen Okean shipyard in Mikolayiv, Ukraine and was completed by Volharding, Foxhol, Netherlands. The 10,899 gt, 12,767 dwt ship can carry 675 TEU and has two 240 tonne SWL cranes that can work in combination. The ship carries a large spreader that is used when the cranes act in combination for an extra heavy lift. (The large black unit is stowed between the two cranes.)

The ship was launched as the Beluga Constitution and delivered as the Beluga Constellation. After Beluga Shipping failed it became the HR Constellation from 2011 to 2017 then Daisy briefly in the same year, settling on Asian Spirit later in 2017.

3   The Undine sailed late this afternoon after spending the day at Autoport offloading cars. The ship arrived in Halifax yesterday, November 25 and docked at Pier 9C to discharge RoRo machinery, then moved to Autoport this morning.

Some of the machinery was hidden from view by a previous cargo of wind turbine towers, but consisted of the usual mix of trucks, tractors and miscellaneous logging and mining equipment. It also had military cargo, in the form of some well worn armoured cars.

The Undine was built in 2003 by Daewoo Shipbuilding + Marine Engineering Co in Okpo and measured 57,112 gt, 22,616 dwt. In 2006 it was lengthened at the Hyundai Vinashin Ninh Hoa yard in Vietnam, by the insertion of a new 12.6m (41.33 ft) long cargo section, thus increasing tonnages to 67,378 gt, 28,338 dwt. Its car capacity then became 7194 cars of the RT43 standard.

The ship followed the usual Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean transatlantic itinerary from Bremerhaven, Goteborg, Zeebrugge, with the addition of the Marchwood military port in Southampton. It sailed for New York.

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