Backlog

 As noted in yesterday's post there was the usual backlog after a holiday weekend. Unusually, the catch up appears to have extended to today, May 21.

 

Containers

The big ship arrival that I missed yesterday, the CMA CGM Chile was still in port this morning, finally getting underway at noon time. As required by harbour regulations, due to its size, it employed two tethered escort tugs, made up astern. They worked the ship to starboard to use the western, deep water channel.

 

The CMA CGM Chile was built in 2019 by Hyundai Samho and is registered at 149,314 gt and 157,076 dwt, with a capacity of 15,072 TEU. It is operating on the Ocean Alliance Asia-North America service. 

Of interest - the ship does not display the CMA CGM funnel mark, nor the large banner letters on the hull that other CMA CGM ships do. This may be explained by the fact that the ship is not owned by CMA CGM, but is on charter from Seaspan Ship Management. Now the largest container ship charter company, Seaspan's 223 ships have a capacity of 2,300,000 TEU.They finance, arrange for build. charter back and manage ships for many container shipping lines.

 

Cars

Autoport was also playing catch up as it completed working the Wallenius Wilhelmsen ship Tijuca (see yesterday's post). As the ship was ready to sail at noon time another Wallenius Wilhelmsen ship, the Carmen, was inbound to take the berth. The "meet" of the two ships was arranged for the lower harbour where the Carmen proceeded west of George's Island and turned north and then proceed east of the island. This allowed the Tijuca to take the usual outbound course from Eastern Passage, tight to Ives Knoll, thus avoiding any close quarters passages. There eas a close up view as the ship made its way inbound, with the tug Atlantic Cedar made up aft for turning assistance.

 

Carmen dates from 2011 when it was delivered by Daewoo Shipbuilding + Marine Engineering in Geoje, South Korea. It is a 74,258 gt, 31,143 dwt ship with a capacity of 7934 CEU (or 7879 RT43 size cars, depending on the source.) It has twelve decks, five of which are hoistable for oversize loads, and reinforced for heavy loads. It has a stern ramp with a 320 tonne capacity and a single side ramp with unknown capacity.

 

Carmen turns around north of George's Island, to line up for Eastern Passage and Autoport. One of the Woodside ferries, in the background, was out of service today due to mechanical issues.

When built Carmen was painted in Wallenius' green and white colours. Wallenius Shipping and the Wilhelmsen Group merged in 2017 and adopted the current  colour scheme over time as ships underwent regular drydocking. This make the ship look very much like its fleet mate Tijuca which was by then outbound, passing a flotilla of disinterested eiders in summer plummage.

 

After completing work at Autoport in the later afternoon, the Carmen moved to Pier 9C to off load RoRo cargo and is due to sail later in the evening.

Among the other arrivals - briefly:

MSC Sagitta III arrived at Pier 42 from CornerBrook on what is termed the Halifax Feeder by the Halifax Port Authority. That service appears to be a new route joining Montral and Boston. In any event it is rare to see a ship with so few containers on deck - not to metion all four cranes at work.

General Cargo 

The Augusta Luna arrived this morning on the Nirint Shipping "nickel run" from Cuba. It will offload is usual cargo of bagged nickel sulfides at Pier 28.

Fish

The herring seiner Fundy Monarch arrived with a small catch that it unloaded to trucks at Pier 9C, then moved to Bishop's Landing. 

As I understand it, this boat is the "scout" and has been working for a few weeks off Nova Scotia, looking for migrating herring. If sufficent quantities are found other boats may arrive from southwestern Nova Scotia or New Brunswick to participate in the catch. 

Built in 2014 by Chantier Naval Forillon in Gaspé, the Fundy Monarch was originally called Dual Venture (the second seiner of that name) and was renamed when acquired by Connors Brothers of Blacks Harbour, NB.  See older post May 31, 2015 on these boats.

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