It was a busy day in the harbour with four arrivals of note.
The arrival of ZIM Vancouver was the first arrival of the day today, April 5, at PSA Halifax Atlantic Gateway, picking up its pilot at 1100 hrs. But that was not the only activity at the terminal because the Tropic Hope had departed over night and the Oceanex Sanderling was already alongside from late last night, handling containers and RoRo traffic.
ZIM Vancouver is a very familiar ship to Halifax as a regular caller since it joined ZIM's ZCA Mediterranean / North America east coast service in 2019. It was built by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co in Dalian, China in 2007. The 39,906 gt, 50,532 dwt ship has a capacity of 4250 TEU. It carried the name Pearl River I from 2007 to 2012, and in fact also called here, for ZIM, as Pearl River I in 2010 and 2011. As previously noted ZIM has a slot sharing arrangement with Hapag-Lloyd and carries many of their containers as their AL7 service. [Hapag-Lloyd orange and USAC green boxes are much in evidence on the ship. UASC merged with Hapag-Lloyd in 2017] It also appears to be well loaded, at least by numbers of containers. The ship is west bound from Valencia, Spain to US ports.
Within an hour the next inbound was the autocarrier Theben headed first for Pier 9C. The ship - quite conveniently for ship photographers - sailed inbound west of George's Island.
It then proceeded through the Narrows to Bedford Basin...
...turned with the assistance of the tugs Atlantic Fir (forward) and Atlantic Oak (aft)...
...then returned to the Narrows to tie up at Pier 9C starboard side to the dock.
The Theben was built in 2016 by Hyundai, Samho, and is a 75,283 gt, 23,786 dwt ship with a capacity of 8,000 CEU. It is equipped with a 320 tonne capacity stern ramp. Unlike older autocarriers it does not have a side ramp.
Once alongside and secured, the ramp was lowered...
Interestingly the ship's main deck and the dock were at exactly the same elevation, but in order for the ramp to work, it was positioned with a "hump", which was flattened out as much as possible to avoid the RoRo cargo from bottoming out and getting hung up.
[It is rare than Halifax's moderate tides effect shipping to any degree - today's high tide was 1.7m and low tide .3m. The tide was rising as the ship was unloaded.]
First off were half a dozen white trucks.
They were only unloaded to clear the path for a pair of identical ABB transformers on their own special 160 tonne SWL heavy duty trailers, pulled by the local stevedores tractor.
Once the transformers were safely ashore the white trucks went back aboard the ship - in reverse. When the Theben moves to Autoport this evening, some of those trucks will have to come ashore again to allow room for the cars to be unloaded - whether to stay ashore or not remains to be seen. They may be destined for one of the ship's next ports. European trucks such as these are relatively rare imports to North America unless they are to be fitted for some special purpose.
[Backdrop ships at the Bedford Institute are: CCGS Private Robertson VC, back in Halifax since March 2 after being transferred to the west coast in 2019; CCGS Alfred Needler recently retired research trawler; CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752 not yet in service from a Vessel Life Extension project.]
Today's activity continued in Part 2................
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