Contship Art - Friday sailing

 The ZIM feeder Contship Art got underway this afternoon, Friday, September 1, on its regular CFX run to Kingston Jamaica. The ship, and its companion Contship Leo, normally sail weekyl on a Monday or Tuesday, but on Tuesday, August 29 iContship Art moved out from the PSA Fairview Cove terminal to anchor in Bedford Basin.

 The ship was built by Jangsu Yangzijiang Shipyard in Jiangyin in 2014 as Taipei Trader. It was renamed Cap Avatele on delivery and renamed Taipei Trader in 2016. It is a 9932 gt, 13,063 dwt vessel with a capacity of 1102 TEU including 220 reefers and carries two 45 tonne SWL cranes. As Taiepi Trader it called in Halifax for the CFX service in 2020 -2021. It was renamed Contship Art in 2022.

Had the ship sailed on its usual day it could have crossed the predicted paths of two hurricanes off the US east coast, Franklin and Idalia.

With those storms now downgraded or expired, the trip will be a much safer one.

As the Contship Art was making its way toward the Narrows it kept to the eastern side of the channel to allow the inbound NYK Meteor lots of room to clear the last bridge and make its turn around the Seaview Point buoy. It appeared to be a much closer pass than it actually was, due to foreshortening by the camera lens.

The NYK Meteor is another of the familiar Daedalus class built by Hyundai Ulsan - this one in 2007. The 55,534 gt, 65,935 dwt ship has a capacity of as much as 4922 TEU (some sources report 4888) and 330 reefers. It appeared to be well under capacity.

The Port of Halifax is reporting a drop in tonnage so far this year. In common with the slackening in world trade, this does not come as a surprise - particularly after last year's record, when the port passed the 600,000 TEU for the first time. For the second quarter of 2023 container traffic was 137,774 TEU, down 11.9%  from last year giving a year to date tally of 265,108 TEU, down 6.3% from last year.

Transatlantic traffic has been hard hit, so the lighter load could be expected on the NYK Meteor which was arriving from Antwerp on THE Alliance's AL5 service. 

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