Pier 9C - a useful spot

 The Port of Halifax accomodates ships for reasons in addition to the usual loading and unloading of cargo. Today January 8 there were two ships at Pier 9C that fitted that miscellaneous category.

The self-unloading bulk carrier Shiela Ann arrived initially at the Gold Bond dock on January 6 and took on a load of gypsum. That process would normally have taken 24 hours or less, but the ship remained alongside until this morning when it moved to Pier 9C.

 On arriving at the Pier there were at least three trucks with semi-trailers loaded with crates, and a crane set up on the brow. The contents of the crates were unknowable, however there were reels, which may be replacement conveyor belting. 

The Shiela Ann was built by Jingnan, Shanghai in 1999 for CSL International and assigned to their self-unloader pool. Two other ships of the same design, the Sophie Oldendorff and CSL Spirit were built by the same yard also for use in the pool in 2000 and 2001 respectively. (When Oldendorff Carriers withdrew from the CSL pool, Algoma purchased the Sophie Oldendorff and renamed it Algoma Vistory in 2019.)

Most of the ports where the Shiela Ann calls are long jetties without truck access or are relatively remote from the source of parts and supplies. Recent ports for the ship include Puerto Drummond in Colombia where it loaded coal November 2-7 for Rio Haina, Dominican Republic (November 11-13) then again loading at Puerto Drummond November 15-17 for Puerto Quetzal Guatemala December 10-11, reached via the Panama Canal December 5-7.  It then returned to Panama December 14, presumably in ballast, and queued up for the Canal, finally locking through December 28 en route for Halifax.

The Shiela Ann is expected to sail early this evening for Tampa, FL.

Just to the south, at the same long pier was the coastal tanker Kivalliq W. It arrived January 6 from Nanticoke, ON and after discharging petroleum product at Imperial Oil, moved to Pier 9C last night. As mentioned in the previous post, the ship normally flags out for the winter. If it will be doing that during its current stay at Pier 9C it will not be difficult to obscure the ship's current port of registry (St.John's) - it has the smallest size lettering I have ever seen! [Barely visible between the ship's name and its IMO number].

 There was also a truck alongside with a refuse skip, which suggests that the ship may be in for a period of maintenance before resuming work under its foreign flag. Since 2017 the flag of choice has been the Marshall Islands, but from December 2022 to June 2023 it was the Portuguese offshore flag of Madeira.

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