San Francisco Express - another big one

Hapag-Lloyd's second big post-Panamax ship arrived at dusk today. San Francisco Express is a sister to Busan Express which began calling last month. These ships manage to cram 6,750 TEU into a 300m x 40m hull. That works out to 75,590 gross tons and 85,400 deadweight. The ship was built in 2004 by Daewoo's Koje yard in South Korea.
Several OOOCL ships have been given Express names, and they are post-Panamax ships too, but slightly smaller in terms of carrying capacity.
These ships have been bumped from Asia/Med/Europe service by even larger ships, thus sustaining the trickle down theory. That theory is that the largest ships will always serve the Asia/Med/Europe service and will displace other ships that will then run transatlantic. All bets on this theory may be off in 2014 when the expanded Panama Canal opens.

Post-Panamax at Halterm

1. Atlantic Larch scoots around the stern of the Tsing Ma Bridge, as the ship starts to back in to Halterm. Although the ship looks loaded, she is not down to her draft marks, indicating a large number of empty containers on board.

2. Atlantic Oak (port side) and Atlantic Larch (starboard) swing Tsing Ma Bridge off Halterm.

The latest post-Panamax container ship to arrive at Halterm is Tsing Ma Bridge, which put in this morning for the first time. K-Line continues to ramp up its ship sizes here, and so it is a good thing that Halterm plans to extend its berth to be able to work two post-Panamaxes at once.

Tsing Ma Bridge was built in 2002 at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea, with tonnages of 68,687 gross and 71, 310 deadweight. This gives her a capacity of 5610 TEU, 500 of which can be reefers.

For more on the structure after which the ship is named try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsing_Ma_Bridge