New Old ship on St-Pierre run

The shuttle service between Halifax and the French island of St-Pierre et Miquelon has been assigned to the ship Fusion flying the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines, but owned and operated by Ukrainian interests.

The ship is a familiar one, having previously operated on the same run as Fort Ross starting July 18, 2007.

The ship was built in 1977 by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and has carried numerous names in her lengthy career. After a major refit in Europe, she was renamed Fusion earlier this year. She is now looking at a three year charter to run to St-Pierre.

The ship can carry bulk cargo, general cargo and RoRo and has two 30 tonne cranes. Her maximum container capacity is 319 TEUs.

She takes over the St-Pierre run from Svendborg (see previous post) which was just a fill in, after Dutch Runner completed her contract and went off to do charter work for Desgagnés.

She is shown above approaching pier 9 on Friday September 3 to tie up in advance of Hurricane Earl. She was loaded and ready to sail when the hurricane passed, and left on Sunday.

New Ship on St-Pierre service

A new ship is doing the weekly run from Halifax to St-Pierre. Svendborg, registered in Gibraltar, but owned by Bischoff Shiffs, of Germany has been on the run for three weeks. Today is the first chance I've had, thanks to foggy weather, to get a proper picture of the ship.

Built in 1993, she can carry 185 TEU of which 50 can be reefers. She has two 25 tonne cranes, but has no RoRo capability, as you will see from the cars sitting on deck.

She appears to have had the same owners for most of her career, but she has had a large collection of names: built as Svendborg Governor, she became 93: IAL Governor, 94 Svendborg Governor, 02 CEC Svendborg, 02 Vedr, 02 CEC Svendborg, 03 NDS Kuito, 04 CEC Svendborg, 08 BBC Columbia.

Her predecessor on the run, Dutch Runner, a Canadian flagged RoRo ship, has been chartered to Desgagnés for the summer for arctic supply and is expected to return to the run in the fall.