Variety

 Monday June 19 was a busy day in Halifax Harbour. Two auto carriers, four ships carrying containers and one tanker made for an interesting variety. 

The first autocarrier was Wallenius Wilhelmsen's Don Pasquale which went directly to Pier 9C to offload the usual variety of forestry, farming snd construction machinery. There f=were also a few shrink wrapped boats and other unidentified material.

Its last port was Southampton, and predictably JCB backhoes were among the vehicles. Built in 1997 by Daewoo, Okpo, the Don Pasquale was lengthened 8.6 meters in 2007 and now measures 67,141 gt, 28,142 dwt, with a capacity of 7,194 cars.

The second auto carrier was the SIEM Cicero which went to Autoport to offload. Its last port was Emden, so no doubt the initials VW were prominent.

SIEM Cicero dates from 2017 and the Uljanik Shipyard in Pula, Croatia. A 56,677 gt, 17,416 dwt ship, it has a capacity of 7000 cars. It is equipped with a 100 tonne SWL capacity stern ramp and a 15 tonne SWL capacity starboard side ramp.

 

The container ship Tropic Lissette arrived yesterday afternoon and was due to sail at 1700 today, and was still unloading at Pier 42 mid-afternoon. As usual it is contributing lots of temperature controlled containers to the mix of boxes on the pier.

 

This morning's arrival was MSC Apollo a first time caller on its way from the US East Coast ports of Savannah (June 11-12), Baltimore (June 8-9), Norfolk (June 6-7), New York (June 3-5) and prior to that Caucedo, Dominican Republic (May 27). It is serving MSC's Indusa route and will be sailing for India via the Suez Canal.

The MSC Apollo was built by IHI, Kure in 2002 as NYK Apollo. The 75,484 gt, 81,171 dwt ship has a capacity of 6492 TEU including 450 reefers. It was renamed in 2019. 

In the afternoon it was the Atlantic Sun inbound for PSA Fairview Cove and ONE Blue Jay for PSA Atlantic Hub.

 The Atlantic Sun is westbound from Liverpool and has container and RoRo cargo.

 

ONE Blue Jay is on the eastbound leg of its voyage. It called in Halifax west bound on THE Alliance's EC5 service on May 29. It was the third ONE "bird" class ship to call here. Over night last night the fourth ship of the class, ONE Crane made a call - arriving and sailing in the dark.

 There was an interesting tanker at Irving Oil. The Alkea arrived yesterday from Amsterdam with a cargo of refined products. The ship's distinctive colour scheme of black hull and burnt orange superstructure is a carry over from its original owners Torm A/S. The ship was built as Torm Gyda in 2009 by Hyundai Mipo in Ulsan. 

A 23,332 gt, 36,207 dwt ship, it was acquired by current owners Chandris Hellas and renamed in 2022. They have repainted the funnel with the well known Chandris "X" (the Greek letter "Chi"), but the orange house would be  much more difficult to cover with one coat of paint, so may have to wait a while.

It is not often that three container ships can be captured in one photo, but that was possible in the mid-afternoon as the MSC Apollo was outbound and Atlantic Sun and ONE Blue Jay were inbound.

The carefully orchestrated timing also involved several tugs. One was escorting the outbound then joined the others to assist the inbounds.

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