Bring on the cruisers - and

 With four cruise ships in port today, October 16, the waterfront was crowded with passengers and the Piers were wall to wall with ships. In addition to the well known Enchanted Princess a Pier 22 and the Seaborun Sojourn at Pier 23, there was one new-to-Halifax ship and one at anchor.

The new ship, Oceania Cruises' Allura, was assigned to Pier 20, so that all the berths on the seawall were occupied. That left anchorage number one open for Zuiderdam. Its passengers were transported to and from shore on the ship's own tenders.

 The Allura was backlit as it made its way in past the appropriately named Black Rock Beach.

The Allura is a very new ship that started its maiden voyage July 18 when it sailed from Trieste, Italy for Athens, Greece. After some Mediterranean cruises, it re-positioned via Portugal to North America for the fall season. It will shift to the Caribbean for the winter.

Built by Fincantieri Sestri Ponente in Genoa, the 67,901 gt ship carries 1200 passengers in 600 staterooms and is served by a crew of 800. A handsome ship, free from graffiti and strange appendages, it does prove that some current ships can be aesthetically pleasing without sacrificing capacity.[ see previous rants on this subject].

Zuiderdam quickly deployed its tenders, and passengers were whisked ashore in short order.

 

In addition to three tenders alongside and one underway, the tug Mighty Edge arrived with had a barge to take off refuse.

There was also one "new to Halifax" container ship port. The CMA CGM Arctic is a 150,783 gt, 159,614 dwt ship with a capacity of 14,812 TEU. It was built by Hyundai Samho and is duel-fuel LNG powered.

 Operating on the Ocean Alliance Asia-North America service, it departed Colombo September 20 and sailed non-stop via the Cape of Good Hope.Typical of large container ships it has the bridge structure well forward. Its deck cargo appears to be just about the maximum, leaving scarcely any closeup view from the helm.

A recent report states that currently, empty containers account for  41% of all container transport globally. Even if that were the case with this ship, it is operating at 14.9 meters draft, which indicates near capacity by weight. Ships now have to compensate for incorrect weight declarations after several casualties were attributed to overweight boxes.

.