Late, late show; Stacked Up; RoRo

 Late, late show

The cruise season for Halifax usually winds up in the last week of October or the fist week of November - and for good reason! The weather is usually cold and windy - not what cruise passengers are looking for - and the hurricane season is usually over in the south where it is still nice and warm. Today, November 19 marks the latest scheduled cruise ship visit in my recollection.  It was the German ship AIDAdiva setting the record.

It tied up at Pier 22 (with the grain leg tower in the background) and lucked into a fine day with a high of 7 ºC [44.6 ºF]. Passengers had the entire day ashore with the ship sailing at 1630 hrs. [Sunset is 1643 hrs AST]
 

The 69,203 gt ship was built in 2007 by Meyer Werft in Papenburg and has a capacity of 2,050 passengers and 646 crew. 

The ship sailed from Rostock Germany November 1 and stopped at most Scandinavian ports before calling in Portland, UK, sailing from there November 12.

It will now go on the Boston and New York then US east coast, Gulf of Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Hawaii, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Sti Lanka, the Maldives, Seychelles, Réunion, Cape Town, Cape Verde, Azores, Portugal and ending up in Hamburg March 23, 2026. If you had the starting price of €17,500 ($27,500 CAN) per person (double occupancy) to drop you could have joined the 133 day cruise. Top end price might be in the range of €24,000 ($38,887.68 at current rate of exchange).
 

Stacked Up Outside

Despite the fact that the PSA Atlantic Hub (southend container terminal) can handle two 10,000 TEU ships at the same time, it cannot, in its present configuration, work three such ships and A smaller ship at the same time. Today there were two ships alongside (one big, one small) and two more big ships waiting in the outer anchorages outside the port limits.

The alongside ships were the 14,414 TEU CMA CGM J. Adams at berth 41 and the 3108 TEU EM Kea at Pier 42.

 The CMA CGM J. Adams came from the Hyundai Ulsan shipyard in 2017 and is shown as 141,950 gt, 148,992 dwt. It arrived yesterday from Colombo on the Ocean Alliance Asia-North America service.

The EM Kea dates from 2007 when it was built  by Stocznia Szczecinska Nowa in Poland. The 35,824 gt, 42,165 fwt ship is on the regular CMA CGM /Maersk joint North Atlantic service from Montreal and bound for Bremerhaven. It also has 500 reefer plugs.

Stacked Up Outside

Unlike aircraft that circle seemingly endlessly when terminals are busy, ships sometimes have the option to anchor. Conditions were good for that off Halifax in recent days allowing for the unusual sight of two ships waiting outside thus avoiding port charges.

 The two are sister ships, both built by Japan Marine United, Kure. The ONE Wren was built in 2018 and the ONE Hawk in 2017. They were built for NYK Line and carried company names NYK Wren until 2021 and NYK Hawk until 2020. Both have similar tonnages of 145,251 gt, 139,995 dwt and 145,407 gt and 138,907 dwt respectively. They are both rated sat 14.026    TEU.

ONE Wren may have priority for berthing, but it is unlikely that both ships will be  docked at the same time since the smaller cranes may not be able to clear deck load.

RoRo 

The continuous parade of auto carriers continues with today's arrival of the Morning Lisa with both import automobiles and other RoRo cargo.

 

 On arrival the ship went north directly to Bedford Basin, turned then proceeded southbound again to tie up at Pier 9C in order to orient its stern ramp correctly.

 The Morning Lisa dates from 2008 when it was delivered by Hyundai, Samho. A 68,701 gt, 28,084 dwt vessel, it has a capacity of 8,011 Car Equivalent Units.

After discharging the usual mix of machinery at Pier 9C the ship moved to Autoport to unload cars.

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Send Off

 As the cruise season draws to a close - there is only one more ship scheduled - it was also time to see the last of a ship that made five calls in Halifax in 2025.

The Seabourn Sojourn made its first call in Halifax this year on September 10 when it berthed stern-in at Pier 23...  

...and was back again September 19, docking at the same berth, but this time bow-in...

 The ship was built in 2010 by T.Mariotti in Genoa as a "Mega Yacht" of 32,346 gt. It has 225 staterooms and can accommodate 458 passengers and 330 crew. 

It arrived  on its last visit November 4 on an eleven day cruise from Montreal to Miami. It remained in port over night, likely due to bad weather, and sailed yesterday afternoon November 5.

 An unofficial low altitude flyover by a pair of military helicopters saw the ship off for what may be its last ever Halifax call. It will make its last cruise for Seabourn Cruise Line in May 2026 in the Caribbean and will then be handed over to Mitsui Ocean Cruises for short term cruises in Japanese waters starting in September 2026. 

 Mitsui also operates the Mitsui Fuji the former Seabourn Odyssey and this ship is to be renamed Mitsui Sakura. (Sakura is the Japanese word for cherry blossom, the national flower of Japan. It can also mean the ornamental cherry tree itself.)

The last scheduled ship of the 2025 Halifax cruise season is the AIDAdiva due November 19. 

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Arcadia sails after extended stay -[ see update]

The P+O Cruises Arcadia sailed late this afternoon after an extended stay in Halifax. The ship arrived Friday morning September 22 and was due to sail that afternoon. However the departure was put off until this morning then extended to early this afternoon and finally to late this afternoon.

There was lots of activity on deck yesterday afternoon when the ship was originally scheduled to sail.
 

Finally sailing this afternoon in summer-like conditions.

Ordered in 2003 by Holland America line as a Vista class, it was allocated to Cunard and was to be "Queen Victoria". Shortly before launch, June 26, 2004, it was transferred to P+O Cruises and completed by Fincantieri Marghera as Arcadia.  (All these lines are part of Carnival) The 84,342 grt ship has a capacity of 2358 max passengers and 976 crew and is propelled by electric azipod drives.

Fleet mate Aurora, which was here September 3 had a fire in the engine room September 20 while en route from Bermuda to the Azores and was drifting without power for about an hour.

The 76,152 grt ships, built in 2000 by Jos. L. Meyer, Papenburg, has a capacity for 1878 passengers and 850 crew. The ship apparently reached the Azores safely.

Both ships cater to British cruisers and have subdued graphics compared to some of the exuberant floating bill boards we see, such as another ship that was in port today, AIDAdiva (see September 14) or its fleet mate AIDAluna on September 4.

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I prefer the plain vanilla ships such as another of today's visitors- Silver Whisper.

Built in 2000 by Mariotti, Genoa it has the understated elegance that is appropriate to an exclusive yacht-like ships. At 28,258 grt it carries only 382 passengers. When I checked two years ago it had the most space per passenger of any cruise ship with 74 gross tons per passenger and with 295 crew it also had the highest passenger to crew ratio of 1.3 to 1.


Update: Arcadia's long stay was due to rope entanglements in its prop(s). These were finally cleared, but not until the ship had missed three port calls. So it is not only whales that are suffering from phantom / abandoned fishing gear.

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Big Day in the Port of Halifax

It was a big day in the port of Halifax in many ways.

For one, it was the presence of no less than five cruise ships, Veendam at pier 20, Carnival Sunshine at pier 22, Insignia at pier 23, Zuiderdam at pier 30-31 and  AIDAdiva and pier 33-34.

The container ship Itea outbound early this morning with the Zuiderdam inbound.

It was also another big day for ZIM as one of its 10,000+ TEU ships arrived. Zim Antwerp was also here in June and was the second ZIM ship of that size to call here.

The 114,044 grt, 116,294 dwt ships came from the Hyundai Samho shipyard in 2009. Its 10,062 TEU capacity just squeezes past the magic 10k threshold to qualify as a large ship. US ports are seeing 14,000 TEU ships already and we may be in line for some too.

While not a large ship by Autoport standards, Siem Cicero is quite new, having been completed as recently as June of this year by the Uljanik shipyard in Pula, Crotia.

The ships comes in at 56,677 grt, 17,416 dwt.

And at Irving Oil in Woodside, a relative rarity, a Maersk tanker.

 Maersk Matsuyama dates from 2008 when Onomichi Zosen in Japan delivered the 26,911 grt, 47,165 dwt handysize tanker. As usual with foreign flag ship (in this case Panama) at Irving Oil, it arrived from the Netherlands with refined product. We should expect European import cargoes at Imperial Oil too after recent events in the southern US.

On top of all this September 13 and 14 are the annual Port Days where the Halifax Port Authority organizes a number of events to highlight the Port. [ A boat trip around the lower harbour on Harbour Queen 1 was one of the vents, and made most of the above photos possible.]

This year the concentration was on Supply Chain Innovation, and various speakers emphasized the importance of cooperation and teamwork to make the shipping process more efficient.  This is also an occasion for the Port to celebrate its achievements and certainly the projected 17% increase in traffic this year is a major one. Last year the Port of Halifax's volume increased by 15% making it the fastest growing container port in Canada, although its total volume is still well behind Vancouver and Montreal.

Although the Port hinted at critical infrastructure changes using all of the harbour, that the  port is on the edge of something big and that it is time to take a big leap, there were no details. Perhaps this is a run up to the revelation of the Port's long term plan - let us hope so - it is indeed time. 

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A high level view of proceedings

There was concentrated activity in the harbour for a short period late this afternoon, and I took a high level view.

Outbound at the time was HMCS Windsor:
 

The cruise ship AIDAdiva cleared her berth at pier 20 and moved out into number one anchorage for a compass swing.

Windsor was able to squeak in between the ship and George's Island. (That is Oceanex Sanderling in the background at Autoport, loading for a mid-week trip to St.John's.)

All this activity caused NYK Deneb (Panama flag) to proceed inbound west of George's Island. Although not a large ship by current standards, it did make an impressive sight.

I have not been paying enough attention to the NYK ships of this class. No less than a dozen, all named for heavenly bodies, are NYK's contribution to the G6 Alliance. 
NYK Deneb was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan in 2007. The 4922 TEU ship measures 55,487 grt, 65,600 dwt. It is owned by Sumitomo Finance SMFL and operated by NYK Line.

Once AIDAdiva had completed its compass swing, it remained in the anchorage, but backed north, until the inbound Agios Minas (Liberian flag) had passed en route to Fairview Cove. It was able to take the usual path east of George's.

Built in 2001 as CMA CGM Ravel by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Ltd in Okpo. It is a 73,059 grt, 79,465 dwt ship with a 6627 TEU (including 500 reefers) capacity. It took its present name in 2014 when it returned to International Maritime Enterprise of Athens, after the CMA CGM charter.

Back at ground level again, the Norwegian Dawn was tied up at pier 22 (not pictured) and Celebrity SUMMIT stern in at pier 31.

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