More icing

Frigid air temperatures (-10C range), cold sea water (+1C range) and winds (25 knots) make for ideal freezing spray conditions. All that is needed then is some cold steel of a ship's hull and icing will occur.
Today's afternoon arrivals had only a thin film of ice, since both ships were coming from the south and did not have prolonged exposure to the arctic like conditions.

The Maltese flag Performance arrived from Norfolk on G6 Alliance service.

With Atlantic Oak on the stern and Atlantic Willow "riding shotgun" the Performace has cleared the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge inbound in the Narrows.

Built in 2002 by IHI Kure as MOL Performance, the 74,071 grt, 74,453 dwt ship has a capacity of 6402 TEU (including 500 reefers). At completion of the MOL charter in 2014, owners Danaos Shipping Co Ltd of Piraeus renamed the ship with a few swipes of the paint brush.

 

AHS Hamburg arrived on its bi-weekly visit for Tropical Shipping, with a bit more spray, acquired on the last leg of its trip from Palm Beach, FL.  It is one of two ships serving Tropical Shipping from Halifax and made its first call January 16. The other ship, Vega Omega, inaugurated the service with its arrival January 8.

Built by Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing, China in 2008, as Pacific Hawk it was a member of the Bockstiegel Reederei fleet until 2012 when it took its present name and joined the Carsten Rehder fleet of Hamburg. Measuring 9957 grt, 13,760 dwt the ship has a capacity of 1118 TEU and carries two 45 tonne cranes mounted on the ship's centre line. The ship is registered in Antigua and Barbuda, the flag of choice for many German ships.

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Fairview Cove - back at work

It was a short holiday for the Fairview Cove container terminal . After clearing its last ship at noon time Saturday, the pier was at full swing again first thing this morning.

The big (old) post-Panamax Performance tied up at the west berth and the NYK Rumina at the east berth.

It is easy to see why ships the size of the NYK Rumina are considered obsolete, when ships the size of Performance (and larger) can now pass through the Panama Canal with ease.

Performance is a 74,0712 grt, 74,453 dwt ship with a capacity of 6402 TEU, including 500 reefers. It was built in 2002 by the Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industry (IHI) Kure yard in 2002 as MOL Performance for Mitsui OSK Line. They sold the ship in 2014 to Danaos Shipping Co Ltd of Piraeus and it was renamed.

Danaos is one of the hurting  non-operating container ship owners (meaning they do not operate their own shipping line but charter ships to the line operators). They had eight ships with Hanjin when it failed, and have 24 charters to expire in 2017 and three more in 2018. Not only that they reduced their charter hire rates 20% on 13 ships to help save Hyundai Merchant Marine from collapse. Banks have extended waivers to Danaos until April, so the future of the 55 ship fleet is in limbo.

Performance is now with the G6 Alliance on its AZX service, but with the re-organization of that alliance in 2017, we may not see much more of this ship. [AZX=Asia, Suez, East Coast North America]

Out in Bedford Basin Fritz Reuter awaits its move tomorrow morning to Halterm.

There was very litttle down time at the Oil docks in Dartmouth.
 

Piltene arrived in the late afternoon of December 25. It has been an off an on caller at Valero and Imperial Oil since 2014. Built in 2007 by the 3 Maj Shipbuilding Industri in Rijeka, Croatia, the 30,641 gret, 52,648 dwt ship is a nice break form the cookie cutter Korean  Mid Range [MR] product tankers we usually see. The Latvian Shipping Co of Riga also operates the tanker Latgale that was here last week.


The tanker East Coat arrived this morning at Irving Woodside.

One small correction to my Christmas Eve post regarding the supplier Skandi Flora. It did not in fact get a break of more than a few hours, for it sailed Christmas Day for the Stena IceMAX, however it returned to port again this morning.
The drill ship has moved much closer to Halifax for its maintenance work, meaning a shorter trip for the suppliers, which include Maersk Nexus (which also arrived today).

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