TransAtlantic

 The majority of ocean going ships that call in Halifax are either arriving from or emabarking on a transatlantic crossing. Some ships are in a transatlantic trade, but for others the Atlantic is just one leg of a much longer voyage or a "one of". Today (September 29) provided examples of all these.

At Imperial Oil the Libyan flag tanker Cartagena was unloading product from Antwerp. The ship arrived yesterday and on leaving here could go to any one of a number of ports, but it is a fairly frequent transatlantic trader.

The 29,341 gt, 46,923 dwt MidRange tanker was built by Hyundai Mipo in 2009. It carried the name Ocean Command very briefly in 2009 before taking its present name. It is part of the twenty-four ship General National Maritime Transport Company (GNMTC), the Libyan state owned tanker operator. Despite the current chaos in Libya, the ship still operates to a high standard, likely managed from one GNMTC's offshore offices, in Malta or Hong Kong.

PSA Fairview Cove worked a first time caller for ZIM Atlantic Container Service (ZCA) - the Tongala. A 2004 product of the Samsung Koje (now Geoje) shipyard it is a 40,030 gt, 50,828 dwt ship with a capacity of 4253 TEU including 400 reefers. It has had seven previous names, begining with P+O Nedlloyd Caribbean, then 2005: Maersk Deva, 2006: Vancouver Express, 2007: Maersk Deva, 2009: Bunga Raya Tujuh, 2010: Deva, 2018: ANL Tongala, and since 2021: Tongala.

A thin haze of forest fire smoke from western Canada has been lingering over the region, filtering photographs, particularly in low sun. (Time of photo: 1906 hrs, sunset was 1857 hrs ADT)

The ship seems to have worked through several of the major container lines, and joined ZIM on charter from Danaos earlier this year. It sailed on the ZCA service from Haifa September 7 and called in Mersin, Izmir, Piraeus, Genoa, and Barcelona en route to Halifax. It is now en route for New York, Norfolk, and Savannah before heading back across the Atlantic.

The other PSA operated terminal, PSA Atlantic Gateway had the "record holder" CMA CGM Marco Polo on the Columbus JAX service operating for the Ocean Alliance of CMA CGM, Evergreen, OOCL and COSCO. It is generally agreed that it is the largest container ship to call in Halifax (and any Canadian port, and several US east coast ports). A 176,546 gt, 187,625 dwt, ship, built in 2012, it has a container capacity of 16,020 TEU. Its sister ships from Daewoo, Okpo, CMA CGM Alexander von Humboldt, CMA CGM Magellan and CMA CGM Jules Verne have nearly the same dimensions, tonnages and capacity, but are smaller "by inches". 

 With no other traffic, the ship came in via the main channel. Although it appears to be well loaded on deck, it was not drawing as much water as it might, judging by the amount of red boot topping showing at the waterline. The outbound Zaandam (see previous post) took its time getting away from Pier 20, allowing the CMA CGM Marco Polo to turn off the dock and back in alongside Pier 41-42.

The ship sailed from China, and Port Klang, Malaysia, passing via the Suez Canal to Tanger Med and on to Halifax. It will leave here for New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, then back to Asia where it will also do a transpacific leg to Los Angles and Oakland.

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