Thursday, July 16, 2020

Busy Day

There were several busy spots in the harbour today, starting in Eastern Passage

The Integrated Tug/Barge Leo A. McArthur / John J. Carrick arrived in the early hours to offload a cargo of asphalt from the Great Lakes for McAsphalt Industries. 


Immediately astern Oceanex Sanderling was working its cargo to/from Newfoundland, but was getting ready to move back to PSA Halifax.


While the Sanderling was crossing the harbour, the auto carrier Torrens was making its way from Pier 31 to Autoport. The tug Spitfire III appears in both photos as it crosses to meet up with the Torrens. The ship will need two tugs to turn and berth at Autoport. Atlantic Oak, was already tied on after helping to get the ship away from Pier 31.


Torrens is sporting the new Wallenius Wilhelmsen colour scheme. Built in 2004, it was until recently still in the traditional red. It has a capacity of 6,354 CEU.

In the lower harbour the tanker Elka Glory was anchored awaiting its turn at Irving Oil Woodside (on departure of Gaïa Desgagnés - see yesterday's post) after arriving from Amsterdam with refined products.


A fairly typical ship of its type, built in 2003 by Brodosplit, Croatia, it measures 27,612 gt, 44,598 dwt. It operates for European Product Carriers and wears their letter "E" on the bow and funnel. This is its second call this year, after three calls in 2019.

Also arriving at anchor, but in number one anchorage, is another bulk carrier bound for Sept-Iles, QC for iron ore. Estela Claire dates from 2017 when it was built by Tsuneishi Zhoushan, a Japanese owned shipyard in Daishan, China, near Shanghai.


The 43,062 gt,m 81,886 dwt ship will undergo inspection for Asian Gypsy Moth. The ship's last port was Aughinish, Eire, where it unloaded bauxite for that port's Rusal Alumina works. However it has presumably been in an Asian port within the last few months.
Two ships in Baltimore, MD were recently discovered to have Asian Gypsy moth larvae, which so far is unknown in the USA, so I am sure the inspection will be a thorough one. One ship was carrying aluminum from India.

There was container traffic today too, with Cerescorp handling the big and the small.


Nolhan Ava arrived on its weekly call. Primarily serving St-Pierre et Miquelon, the ship also calls in Argentia, NL with container and RoRo service, providing some level of competition with Marine Atlantic and Oceanex. There have been shipping links between Halifax and the French islands for centuries, but this is the first ship in many years to fly the Canadian flag and thus be able to carry cargo between Canadian ports also.

At the larger end of the ConRo scale (in fact sharing the title of the world's largest ConRo with its four sister ships) Atlantic Sail made its regular arrival.


With the tethered escort tug Atlantic Oak making up astern the big ship glides in west of George's Island, to avoid the major course corrections needed to steer around the anchored Estela Claire at number one anchorage.

Despite the similarity of names there is no corporate connection between Atlantic Towing Ltd and Atlantic Container Line.

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