Finished with engines - Cabot on last leg

End of an Era

Cabot ties up at pier 9A this morning.

It was "finished with engines" shortly after 9 am this morning when the ConRo Cabot tied up at pier 9A. Gone are the OCEANEX banners on her sides, hastily painted over, as the ship enters layup until she can be sold.

The ship, and her sister Cicero, had a long history on the Newfoundland run both from Halifax and Montreal, and it is worth recounting here once again.

Cicero in Oceanex colours entering the Narrows of St.John's harbour.

The story starts with Ellerman's Wilson Line, a venerable UK concern, that was expanding its long standing UK/Sweden service (jointly with Fred Olsen) with RoRo ships. They ordered two ships form the equally venerable Smith's Dock in Middlesbrough, England. Smith's had become part of British Shipbuilders when the British industry was nationalized,  but had been a reputable builder of a variety of craft, including the whale catcher upon which the World War II corvette was based. 
All was not well in the yard, and when the Cicero, first of the new ships, was delivered it was found to have serious stability problems and was returned to the yard for corrective measures. The solution was the installation of a flume stabilization tank high above the upper deck aft of the superstructure (just above the "X" in the above photo). The tank, filled with baffles and seawater, was to counteract rolling by the slow sloshing of the water to the other side of the ship.

The solution worked after a fashion, but the ship was thought to be unsuitable for its intended trade and after three years of charters to various companies it was finally sold to Federal Commerce + Navigation of Montreal in 1982. After a charter to Brazil it went into operation from Montreal to Corner Brook and St.John's under the banner of Atlantic Container Express (A.C.E.) with Clarke Shipping as manager In 1991 that service was combined under common ownership with the Halifax/Corner Brook/St.John's service, and was renamed Oceanex. In 1994 Oceanex purchased the ship and continued operating it mostly from Montreal, but sometimes from Halifax as a substitute until November 2006 when it was replaced by Oceanex Avalon. Cicero was sold and sailed from Montreal December 25, 2006 as Aegean Fantasy for service in the Mediterranean, where it operated sporadically until laid up in 2012.

Meanwhile Smith's dock completed the second ship in the series, Cavallo in 1979.

Cavallo lost some of her new paint in a December 1980 transatlantic delivery trip. The orginal Ellerman's Wilson bottle green shows through Fednav red.

 
It was also fitted with the flume tank, but Ellerman's Wilson Line refused delivery and ship was laid up in a nearly complete state until 1980. Seaforth Fednav, part of Federal Commerce + Navigation bought the ship and it arrived in Halifax for the first time December 19, 1980. It was  placed on the Fednav service from Halifax to Corner Brook and St.John's.

 Cavallo in A.S.L. service had red bulwarks for a time

The Fednav service became Atlantic Sea Route Ltd  (A.S.L.) in 1982 when it combined with Newfoundland Container Line. In 1987 A.S.L. merged into A.C.E., which purchased Cavallo with Clarke Steamships as managers. A.C.E. renamed the ship Cabot,  and it was transferred to the Montreal/CornerBrook/St.John's run.

As Cabot in A.C.E. service, the ship ran on the Montreal service.

A.C.E. became Oceanex in 1991 and they retained the ship's name.Oceanex found that more capacity was needed on the Newfoundland operation and they sent Cabot to be lengthened 25 meters in 1996. The ship's original 5108 gross tons, had been increased to 11,923 when its car decks were reclassified as closed decks, and so the the lengthening increased the tonnage to 14,597.

The lengthened Cabot maintained a weekly schedule on the St.Lawrence, year round.

Since 1996 the ship has shown up in Halifax from time to time as substitute for fleetmate ASL Sanderling during refits, but has run steadily from Montreal to St. John's. (Oceanex cut out the CornerBrook service a few years ago.) In 2005-2006 the ship's Pielstick engines were rebuilt at the Verreault Navigation shipyard in Les Méchins, QC and in January-February 2008 it received a major refit at Las Palmas.

With delivery of Oceanex Connaigra in November 2013, Cabot was retired from service and laid up in Montreal. However when the new ship's propeller hub failed, Cabot was pressed back into service. It made its last commercial sailing from Montreal to St.John's last week, and as soon it unloaded, it sailed to Halifax, arriving this morning.

For a ship that was initially rejected by its owners, it has proven to be a remarkably dependable vessel, sailing year round on difficult routes. However in anticipation of a replacement, the ship has been allowed to run down, and it was in fairly rough looking condition on arrival today.

The question now is whether the ship will be sold on for further service.It seems more likely that it will be sold to a third party and quickly re-sold for scrap, but we will have to wait and see.

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Oceanex Sanderling rolls in for the seond time this week

                            1 and 2 There is still a significant swell outside Meagher's Beach.



As previously reported Oceanex will now be calling in Halifax twice per week due to large cargo demands for Newfoundland. With improving weather Oceanex Sanderling should be able to squeeze in the two calls in a week. Its first arrival this week was an overnighter Monday-Tuesday, calling at Autoport only. I did not see the ship on that call, so I don't know if loaded only cars for Newfoundland or if it took some other RoRo. Normally at this time of year there is a huge demand in Newfoundland for new cars and trucks, and rental cars for the summer. Added to the large demands of several construction mega projects, the ship will be kept busy for some time to come.

This afternoon the ship arrived and went directly to Autoport. It will move to Halterm this evening.

3. Oceanex Sanderling approaches Ives Knoll and begins to make the turn for Eastern Passage.

Oceanex on a roll

Oceanex Sanderling leaves Halterm for Autoport.

Oceanex, the company that provides container and RoRo shipping services to Newfoundland from Montreal and Halifax, is expanding its service even before delivery of its new ship in the fall of 2013.
A recent press report indicates that the company will be adding "another ship" to its Halifax run in Apriil. Whether this means an actual ship, or that they will be doubling their calls in Halifax is not clear. Last year Oceanex Sanderling was making two trips a week between Halifax and St.John's, but that has been down to once a week in recent months. However they have added Argentia to their routes, even though it is not shown on their published schedules. Development of the Vale nickel smelter in Long Harbour has resulted in an increase in traffic, so they have apparently added Argentia, the nearest port to Long Harbour, to reduce congestion and road traffic in St.John's. They dropped Corner Brook as a port of call last year, preferring to use trucks to move cargo from Corner Brook to St.John's. Both Oceanex Sanderling and Cabot have called in Argentia. The third, and newest ship in the current fleet, Oceanex Avalon is a container only ship.
The new ship, Oceanex Connaigra is under construction in Germany, with keel blocks to be laid February 12, launch May 1 and delivery October 1. The original assumption was that this ship would replace Cabot on the Montreal / St.John's service, but even that is now in question as traffic may warrant keeping Cabot, despite its age. 

 Oceanex Avalon at speed on the St.Lawrence River

Oceanex skips Corner Brook

1.Oceanex Sanderling arriving this morning for pier 41, with the tug Atlantic Larch to assist, and will move this afternoon to Autoport to load cars. It will sail this evening, and will be back in Halifax Friday for its second trip.

Oceanex has decided to skip the port of Corner Brook for the time being. Their Halifax service used to be Halifax/ St.John's/ Corner Brook/ Halifax. Due to a lack of cargo offering in Corner Brook, and increased traffic out of Halifax bound for St.John's Oceanex recently adjusted their schedule to allow two sailings each week between Halifax and St.John's for Oceanex Sanderling.

Reports indicate that this may be a temporary measure, and that calls will be made in Corner Brook if cargo warrants. For the near future at least, Corner Brook cargo will be trucked to and from St.John's.

Oceanex's St.Lawrence service, using Cabot and Oceanex Avalon will continue to run between Montreal and St.John's.

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Thebeland - will she be back for more?

On March 14 Oceanex Inc applied for an additional coasting license for Thebeland. The original license was from January 30 to May 31, to allow time for refits of Oceanex Sanderling and Cabot.

The new license is from May 31 to August 15, and cites both the Montreal/ St.John's route and the Halifax/St.John's/ Corner Brook route.

No reason is given in the application to the Canadian Transportation Agency for this extension.

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Update: Oceanex's Cabot is due in Las Palmas tomorrow for her refit, and Thebeland is now running the Montreal/St.John's run.

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Thebeland - one more trip

1. Thebeland sails from Halifax 2011-03-04. Note many containers loaded athwartships.

The container RoRo Thebeland has one more trip to make from Halifax for Oceanex. She will then move to the Montreal/ St.John's service to substitute for Cabot.

She is scheduled to sail from Halifax March 10, to arrive St.John's March 12 then proceed to Montreal March 15.

Cabot is en route to Montreal now, arriving March 7, and arriving back in St.John's March 11.

Meanwhile Oceanex Sanderling has completed her refit in Gibraltar and is at sea, due west of Lisbon, and is due to arrive in Halifax March 12.

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Congestion looming (updated 2100)

1. Tucks line up at Halterm at 5 pm. At least fifty trucks still waiting to get in. At times during the day the line was twice this long.

2. OOCL Montreal and Valencia Express at Fairview Cove this evening. Both are diverted from Montreal

With diverted ships arriving daily and at least two "stacked" outside, there are now suggestions that the port will become jammed and congestion will further delay shipments.

Some in Halifax have resented the success of Montreal as a year round port. In the "good old days", i.e. before the mid 1960s, Montreal was strictly a summer port. It shut down for three to four months a year due to ice and shipping was diverted to Halifax, Saint John and US east coast ports.
With the advent of winter navigation that all changed, and Montreal has gone on to become the second largest container port in Canada after Vancouver.
In those "good old days" Halifax was only busy for a short winter season, and the rest of the year was a bit of a back water. Extra workers were brought in for the winter, including longshoremen, office clerks, rail workers, etc., But when Montreal went to year round work Halifax eventually benefited too and became a steady year round container port, but with about one third the volume of Montreal.
Now, with the port of Montreal shut down by a lock out, Halifax is all of a sudden inundated with extra cargo and some say it will soon become backlogged.

This could happen and this is why:
1. Halifax quite happily handles 500,000 TEU or so per year. Even so the road network strains to accommodate the trucks, especially downtown. A sudden spike in truck traffic will of course cause line ups and backlogging. New infrastructure cannot be built over night to handle added traffic.
The new main gate at Fairview Cove will be more efficient than the old one at Halterm (which is scheduled for expansion, but work has not started.) The road and street infrastructure will be taxed with what some say will be a doubling or tripling of port related truck traffic.
So although the port infrastructure can handle many more containers, the surrounding road infrastructure cannot.

2. The port itself can berth five container ships at one time. So add several extra ships a day to its ongoing business, and you will inevitably have delays. It will depend on train and truck service to get containers in and out of the two terminals promptly to prevent backlogs. There is sufficient labour and equipment to handle normal trade and extra trade, but there is a limit to how much overtime people are willing to work and how equipment will stand up to constant use.

3. CN Rail is the only rail line in Halifax. In order to handle increased traffic it will have to add more trains coming in and out, and it will have to do a lot more shunting. It can do this, and will. If it has the serviceable equipment and manpower, it should be able to handle whatever is thrown at it. However there will be delays simply because it takes time to accommodate extra trains on its tracks, and deal with "upstream" delays in Montreal and Toronto.

Another issue that will arise as part of the Montreal lock out is delays in Newfoundland traffic. Since Newfoundland is dependant on shipping, the Montreal lock out has caused major head aches. Oceanex Inc handles a good portion of that trade and Marine Atlantic handles the rest. With Montreal closed, Oceanex must re-deploy two of its ships to Halifax- that isn't a big problem in itself, but these ships must find berth space at container terminals that will now be very busy.
The bigger problem is that the container and RoRo cargo normally destined for or coming from Montreal must now be brought to Halifax, either by road or train. I have heard that Oceanex has contracted for one hundred trucks to carry container into and out of Halifax. Many of these boxes will be carrying perishables, which need to be moved quickly. And of course theses boxes originate from all over Canada, and were collected in Montreal for shipping.
Last night's container train out of Halifax was carrying an unprecedented number of Oceanex containers, but none of these were reefers.
Just the addition of the Newfoundland containers would be a significant boost to traffic in Halifax.

Update:

Just as a point of interest, CN has put on extra container trains. Starting yesterday an additional container train has been added, making two trains arriving and two trains departing per day. Each train may be up to 12,000 feet long.

Also of interest MSC (Mediterranean Shipping) is not using the train. All their containers are being trucked into and out of Halifax. This must be using hundreds of trucks per day. They seem to have signed up any available vehicle they could find, because some of the trucks I saw today were old and beat up. At least one broke down just after leaving the Fairview Cove terminal.

Oceanex seems to have had better luck with the trucks they have hired. I saw dozens of them today and most looked to be in good condition.

First Diversion from Montreal

The first ship to arrive in Halifax due the Montreal port shut-down is shown entering port this morning - less than 24 hours after the Port of Montreal locked out its longshoremen.

The ship is the familiar Cabot - the same ship shown in the Shipfax masthead. Cabot normally operates between Montreal and St.John's NL, for Oceanex Inc. The ship sailed from St.John's, but was re-routed to Halifax when the lock-out was announced and will unload here. She will then be forced to wait for outbound cargo, until it arrives by road or rail from Montreal.

Oceanex operates three ships to Newfoundland. Ocean Sanderling, running from Halifax to St. John's, Corner Brook and back to Halifax, Cabot, and Oceanex Avalon also running from Montreal.

Cabot is a familiar sight in Halifax nonetheless, because she used to be the Halifax ship before Oceanex Sanderling was acquired. She has also filled in for Sanderling during refits and has been diverted here due to ice.

Built as Cavallo in 1979 by Smith's Dock in Middlesbrough, England, she was rebuilt and lengthened in 1995.