Seeing Red

 Two ships arrived today with the only similarity being their hull colours, and even those were quite different shades of red.

The hull colour of the first arrival was only revealed after sunrise when the ship was already tied up at Imperial Oil's number 3 dock. The somewhat faded red showed off well in the morning sunshine.

 

The ship is the STI Pontiac a member of the 111 ship strong Scorpio Tankers Inc. fleet. The publicly traded Scorpio uses its own Turkish based management group Zenith Gemi to operate its ships, while the Chinese based Taiping + Sinopec Leasing Co Ltd still holds the ownership papers and is responsible for the commercial management.

The ship was built by the prolific Hyundai Mipo in Ulsan and has typical MidRange dimensions of 29,889 gt (some sources say 29,785) and 49,990 dwt. The ship's last port is listed as Houston.With the St.Lawrence Seaway now closed for the winter Imperial Oil will have to source refined products from refineries other than its own facilities in Ontario.

The second arrival also did not immediately announce its colour, arriving as it did with the sun behind it. Its form however was service unmistakeable as it is one of several sister ships operating for THE Alliance's EC5. 

As its bridge loomed over the Black Rock Beach knoll, several spectators were startled to see such a large ship so close to shore. It was using the deep water Western Channel, which is not used as much as the main channel, which means that it must change course very closed to Point Pleasant.

The ONE Crane was built in 2016 by Japan Marine United, Kure as NYK Crane and renamed in 2019 as NYK Lines partnered in the Ocean Network Express (ONE) joint venture. Its unique magenta hull colour soon revealed. The 144,285 gt, 139,335 dwt ship has a container capacity of 14,026 TEU.

According to the Port of Halifax schedule the ship is some eleven days behind its orginal schedule. A little digging reveals that the ship sailed from Colombo Sri Lanka December 12, 2023. In order to avoid the dangers of the Red Sea, the ship diverted from its usual Suez Canak route and transitted around South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. It passed Cape Town December 28.

This may be the first ship to reach Halifax after making such a wide doversion, but it will not be the last. Despite naval patrols and defensive and offensive measures against Houthi forces in Yemen, the Red Sea route is not dependably safe, and we can expect other ships from Asia to seek alternatives. 

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