Destination Halifax OPL

A ship giving the destination "Halifax OPL" has mystified me and other ship watchers, although it became obvious that it means that the ship is headed for the outer anchorages off Halifax. In fact it means "Outside Port Limits", a term well defined in maritime law and used in the wording of charters.

As of today two ships occupy that destination off Halifax. Technically they are not within the Port of Halifax, and thus not required to pay wharfage or other fees. They are also outside the pilotage limits. As long as they keep to the traffic control lanes and regulations, they are free to leave for sea without a pilot.

On the right in the photo is the Bigroll Beaufort. Having completed unloading wind turbine components at the Woodside dock, the ship may be doing crew work on deck, but does not need to be paying fees in port.

On the left of centre is the AS Federica which had been laid up in port since April before moving put to "OPL" in May. The ship was on a ZIM charter which has ended and likely is awaiting another assignment. When it left Halifax it went outside Canadian territorial waters, so it is still "at sea" legally, not having cleared Customs again in bound.

.

All Aboard - Vole au Vent

The last components were loaded aboard the jack-up ship Vole au Vent and it is scheduled to sail for Virginia later today. The wind farm towers, blades and nacelles arrived in Halifax from Europe on the Bigroll Beaufort and were lifted aboard Vole au Vent for installation off the Virginia coast. Vole au Vent's crane has a 1500 tonne lifting capacity.

Halifax was used as a staging point for the project to work around the Jones Act, a set of US laws that restrict shipping between American ports and within American waters to America owned/ built/ registered and crewed ships.

Bigroll Beaufort was also scheduled to sail today. That has been postponed, but the ship is not expected to linger long.

.

We have lift off

The wind farm installation vessel Vole au Vent moved into position alongside Bigroll Beaufort again yesterday, and once spudded down elevated its hull out of the water.

Today it was at work lifting wind turbine components aboard.

.

Primary Colours Day

It was an ideal day for colours, with bright sun in a cloudless sky. Ships seemed to take advantage of this with a display of most of the primary colours (or shades thereof). Instead of the drab black and sometimes white of yesteryear, today there were ships with Red, Orange,Yellow, Green and Blue and perhaps shades of Indigo and Violet

Red was well displayed by the Canadian Coast Guard as both CCGS Earl Grey and CCGC G.Peddle S.C. sailed this afternoon.

G.Peddle displays a 'Fisheries Patrol' banner on its bridge rail. 

They sailed past Bigroll Beaufort which had shifted positions end for end at Woodside to off load another wind turbine.

An unusual mint green kayak on the right!

At the adjacent Exxon Mobil dock the supplier   Atlantic Osprey was just in from Sable Island, moving into the orange shade.

Arriving from St-Pierre et Miquelon (by way of Argentia, NL eastbound) Nolhan Ava exhibits both green and yellow to help fill the spectrum.

There were choices for blue:

Vole au Vent has returned to Halifax to load another wind turbine, and was refueling at the Irving Oil terminal in Woodside. Its blue hull can barely be seen, until it is jacked up on its spuds, then it is entirely visible.

Another blue ship, the Pola Imabari arrived this afternoon for Asian Gypsy Moth inspection. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency requires ships that have been in the far east recently to be inspected and cleared before going to ports where the invasive species could hatch and populate Canadian forests.

 The port anchor has been readied for lowering when the ship reaches number 1 anchorage.

The ship was built by Imabari Zosen  in 2016 as Glorious Sunrise, 23,232 gt, 37,718 dwt and fitted with four cranes. I could not see any bucket grabs for handling bulk cargo. However it does carry stanchions to permit deck loads of timber, and is considered to be a general cargo ship as opposed to a bulk carrier.

The ship begins to swing round in a very light wind, but the crew seems to be having trouble deploying the pilot ladder.

Oceanex Sanderling is in the background at Autoport, taking on its weekly consignment of cars for Newfoundland, and providing a bit of red/blue contrast.

Its last port was Vila do Conde, Brazil, so the ship is likely carrying bauxite or alumina, bound for one of the Quebec ports such as La Baie, Sept-Iles or Baie Comeau. The ship is registered in Panama, but is owned by GTLK Asia Ltd, a large international leasing company, based in Russia, usually associated with aircraft. Mangers are INOK NV, also a large Russian concern, based in St.Petersburg.
The significance of the letter P (Cyrillic for "R") on the funnel is a mystery.

For the remaining blue range of colours the sky and water will have to do in providing those hues.

.

Dartmouth Trip

Although I live on the Halifax* (southwest) side of Halifax harbour, the best views of ships are sometimes from the opposite, Dartmouth** side of the harbour. Fortunately there are bridges and ferries that make it easy to get back and forth. So depending on the position of the sun and the scene of the "action" I go to Dartmouth frequently.

Today there was an unusual ship move that would be difficult to see from Halifax, so off to Dartmouth I went.

The Algoma tanker Algoscotia was set to move from the Irving Oil dock to Imperial Oil. Built in 2004 by Qiuxin, Shanghai the 13,352 gt, 18,610 dwt ship has been calling in Halifax since new. Algoma took over Imperial Oil's own tanker fleet and gradually went about replacing the ships with new ones. Algoma tankers usually carry Imperial product, so seeing the ship at the Irving Oil terminal is rare although not unheard of.

In Dartmouth, and at the next dock, the heavy lift shift Bigroll Beaufort is still at IEL Woodside waiting to offload the next wind turbine. The first of the four has been dispatched to the Virginia coast for installation. I had the chance for a new angle on the ship.

Is there something about Nova Scotia where utility poles are never vertical?

* The name "Halifax" is now applied to the Halifax Regional Municipality [HRM], a huge geographical  area formed of dozens of smaller communities in the year 1996. Among them were the cities of Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford and the largely rural Halifax County. Its population of just over 400,000 plus resides in an area of 2,120 square miles, strung along a ragged coastline.

**The City of Dartmouth was formed in 1961 with the amalgamation of several unincorporated neighbourhoods, each with a distinct identity. Woodside, South Woodside and Imperoyal (named for the Imperial Oil refinery) were among them, along with the town of Dartmouth. "Dartmouth" is still an official geographical name, even though it is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. In 1996 when the HRM was formed the City of Dartmouth had a population of about 65,000. The name "Halifax" has now come to include Dartmouth when referring to the Halifax Regional Municipality. However Dartmouth residents usually make the distinction, and others extend the term Dartmouth to a huge swath of the eastern portion of the HRM that was never part of the old City of Dartmouth.

.

Woodside activity

The Woodside dock has seen some interesting activity over the years, but over the next few days it will see something quite unique. The wind farm installation vessel Vole au Vent arrived yesterday and today was positioned alongside the Bigroll Beaufort to begin transferring the components of wind turbines.

The 2020-05-18 Vole au Vent tied up yesterday with its crane stowed, and floating on its own hull.

This morning Bigroll Beaufort has moved back along the dock, with Vol au Vent alongside, jacked up on its four spuds and its crane elevated.

The 1500 tonne capacity crane positioned to lift components off the ship.

There is an ideal viewing spot from the Woodside commuter parking lot.

Vole au Vent was built in 2013 by the CRIST SA shipyard in Gdynia, Poland as Vidar. Measuring 18,781 gt, it has the 1500 tonne crane and four 90 meter spuds that allow it to work in 50 meters of water. Although its deadweight tonnage is listed at 1500, it can carry 6500 tonnes of cargo. It is also equipped with a helicopter deck and can accommodate 90 workers. The Jan de Nul Group of Belgium acquired and renamed the ship in 2016.

.

Wind off Virginia

As most days prove in Nova Scotia the wind blows steadily on the coast. As a power generation source the wind is employed in the shallow waters of many European countries, but is relatively unknown in eastern North America where land space is not at a premium. That is about to change, at least in coastal Virginia, where Dominion Energy is about to install two 6MW turbines 27 miles off Virginia Beach as an initial test program. Eventually they hope to have up to seventy turbines in the same area.

Because the United States has no offshore installation vessels, a way had to be found to install the two units and still be in compliance with the United States's restrictive cabotage laws, commonly known as the Jones Act.

The wind turbines, including the towers and blades were built in Europe and arrived in Halifax April 28 on the specialist heavy cargo ship Rolldock Beaufort, seen here alongside the IEL dock in Woodside (Dartmouth).

The United States' cabotage law prescribes that only US built, owned, crewed and flagged ships may work between US ports. It would therefore require a Jones Act compliant ship to move the components from shore to installation site.

A loophole in the Jones Act means that ships arriving directly from overseas, without landing in the US can apparently work in US waters. [This has been contentious in the Gulf of Mexico oil patch, where US seafarers are been deprived of work in US waters.] Therefore Bigroll Beaufort will transfer its components here, and a specialists installation ship will pick them up in stages and install them directly without landing in a US port.

That installation ship is Jan de Nul Group's Vole au Vent which arrived in Portland, UK today, presumably en route to Halifax. Equipped with a 1500 tonne capacity crane, the ship is a jack-up vessel that can work in 50 meters of water. (More on the ship when it arrives here.) The de Nul company, well known Belgian dredging contractors, have also developed a specialty in offshore turbine foundations and installation.

Vole au Vent could not carry the entire project cargo in one trip, and there is not enough time to return to Europe to do the work in phases and still complete the project this year, so Halifax has become the staging point.

.