Backlog

 As noted in yesterday's post there was the usual backlog after a holiday weekend. Unusually, the catch up appears to have extended to today, May 21.

 

Containers

The big ship arrival that I missed yesterday, the CMA CGM Chile was still in port this morning, finally getting underway at noon time. As required by harbour regulations, due to its size, it employed two tethered escort tugs, made up astern. They worked the ship to starboard to use the western, deep water channel.

 

The CMA CGM Chile was built in 2019 by Hyundai Samho and is registered at 149,314 gt and 157,076 dwt, with a capacity of 15,072 TEU. It is operating on the Ocean Alliance Asia-North America service. 

Of interest - the ship does not display the CMA CGM funnel mark, nor the large banner letters on the hull that other CMA CGM ships do. This may be explained by the fact that the ship is not owned by CMA CGM, but is on charter from Seaspan Ship Management. Now the largest container ship charter company, Seaspan's 223 ships have a capacity of 2,300,000 TEU.They finance, arrange for build. charter back and manage ships for many container shipping lines.

 

Cars

Autoport was also playing catch up as it completed working the Wallenius Wilhelmsen ship Tijuca (see yesterday's post). As the ship was ready to sail at noon time another Wallenius Wilhelmsen ship, the Carmen, was inbound to take the berth. The "meet" of the two ships was arranged for the lower harbour where the Carmen proceeded west of George's Island and turned north and then proceed east of the island. This allowed the Tijuca to take the usual outbound course from Eastern Passage, tight to Ives Knoll, thus avoiding any close quarters passages. There eas a close up view as the ship made its way inbound, with the tug Atlantic Cedar made up aft for turning assistance.

 

Carmen dates from 2011 when it was delivered by Daewoo Shipbuilding + Marine Engineering in Geoje, South Korea. It is a 74,258 gt, 31,143 dwt ship with a capacity of 7934 CEU (or 7879 RT43 size cars, depending on the source.) It has twelve decks, five of which are hoistable for oversize loads, and reinforced for heavy loads. It has a stern ramp with a 320 tonne capacity and a single side ramp with unknown capacity.

 

Carmen turns around north of George's Island, to line up for Eastern Passage and Autoport. One of the Woodside ferries, in the background, was out of service today due to mechanical issues.

When built Carmen was painted in Wallenius' green and white colours. Wallenius Shipping and the Wilhelmsen Group merged in 2017 and adopted the current  colour scheme over time as ships underwent regular drydocking. This make the ship look very much like its fleet mate Tijuca which was by then outbound, passing a flotilla of disinterested eiders in summer plummage.

 

After completing work at Autoport in the later afternoon, the Carmen moved to Pier 9C to off load RoRo cargo and is due to sail later in the evening.

Among the other arrivals - briefly:

MSC Sagitta III arrived at Pier 42 from CornerBrook on what is termed the Halifax Feeder by the Halifax Port Authority. That service appears to be a new route joining Montral and Boston. In any event it is rare to see a ship with so few containers on deck - not to metion all four cranes at work.

General Cargo 

The Augusta Luna arrived this morning on the Nirint Shipping "nickel run" from Cuba. It will offload is usual cargo of bagged nickel sulfides at Pier 28.

Fish

The herring seiner Fundy Monarch arrived with a small catch that it unloaded to trucks at Pier 9C, then moved to Bishop's Landing. 

As I understand it, this boat is the "scout" and has been working for a few weeks off Nova Scotia, looking for migrating herring. If sufficent quantities are found other boats may arrive from southwestern Nova Scotia or New Brunswick to participate in the catch. 

Built in 2014 by Chantier Naval Forillon in Gaspé, the Fundy Monarch was originally called Dual Venture (the second seiner of that name) and was renamed when acquired by Connors Brothers of Blacks Harbour, NB.  See older post May 31, 2015 on these boats.

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Cruise, Cruise, Cruise and More

 Although it is still early in the season, there were three cruise ships in the Port of Halifax today, April 27: Viking Polaris, Volendam and Norwegian Pearl.

Viking Polaris was back for its second visit. After its first visit April 10 it has covered a lot of territory:  Trois-Rivières April 25, Montreal 16, Toronto 17-18, Montreal 20, Trois-Rivières 21, Quebec City 21, Port Alfred 22, Sept-Iles 23, and Charlottetown 25. It is now off to New York City and will not be back again until August 17.

The 30,114 gt ship, built in 2022 by Fincantieri carries 378 passengers and 256 crew. It sister ship Viking Octantis was here April 18 [qv] en route to a summer's cruising on the Great Lakes.

While in port, the ship discharged some refuse to a barge and exercised its Zodiacs. The workboat / landing craft Tidal Runner was doing tug duty with the barge.

 

Volendam

 A ship that will become a familiar sight in Halifax this year made its first ever call in Halifax today. Volendam, built in 1999 by Fincantieri, Marghera is a member of the Rotterdam class, measuring 60,906 gt with a capacity of 1432 passengers and 647 crew. It replaces sister ship Zaandam which had been calling in Halifax since 2019. The two ships have exchanged routes with Zaandam now doing Alaska tours.

Volendam will take up the east coast run out Boston to Portland, Halifax, Sydney, Charlottetown, Magdalen Islands, Quebec City, Montreal. The latter is a terminal port also. From there, with a new contingent of passengers the ship retraces its way back to Boston via the same ports including Halifax. In all it will make 20 calls in Halifax between now and October 15 when it will make a Mediterranean round trip from and to Fort Lauderdale, its winter base.

Norwegian Pearl was today's first arrival but I did not catch a glimpse of it until it was outbound and then as it was "going away."

 A 2006 product of Meyer Werft, Papenburg, it is a 93,350 gt ship carrying 2,394 passengers and 1,099 crew. (It was refurbed in 2017). Unusual for a cruise ship, it is eastbound transatlantic, sailing from New York April 25. After Halifax it is scheduled to stop in Reykjavik, Belfast, Cobh-Cork, Isle of Portland (Weymouth), Le Havre and finally Southampton May 9.

It was interesting to see how much smoke the two older ships made as they picked up speed outbound.  I don't know if either ship used shore power when they were in Halifax, but I hope they weren't making that much particulate when in port.

And More 

There was other activity in the port today too:

At Autoport the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean auto carrier Tijuca arrived from Southampton and sailed for New York.

Dewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co Ltd built the ship in 2008 at Okpo. A 71,673 gt, 30,089 dwt ship, it can carry 7620 RT43 cars and is equipped with a 320 tonne capacity stern ramp and a small side ramp. It has the usual rounded superstructure forward, but its bridge structure is elevated three decks above the weather deck, which is at least one deck, if not two decks, higher than most autocarriers. While this must improve forward visibility, it is not a feature taken up on newer ships.

Both container terminals were working today. At the South End Container Terminal it was EM Kea on the Maersk / CMA CGM St.Lawrence route from Montreal for Bremerhaven.

 At Fairview Cove it was an 0900 hrs departure for the overnight caller Delphinus C, the former NYK Delphinus. A Dedalus class ship of 55,487 gt, 65,950 dwt, it has a capacity of 4922 TEU. 

One of several sister ships on THE Alliance's AL5 service it arrived yesterday afternoon from Saint John, NB after its usual string of calls from Port Everglades, Panama, Los Angeles, Oakland and back to Panama, Cartagena and Saint John.

 

The tug Atlantic Bear worked the ship all the way through the Narrows as stern tethered escort, ready to pull or brake if needed

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Tijuca

The huge drop in demand for new cars and the closure of many of the factories, has resulted in very few car carrier visits to Halifax. By my reckoning today's arrival of  Wallenius Wilhelmsen's Tijuca is only the second such ship to call in Halifax this month.

After unloading cars at Autoport the ship shifted to pier 27-28 to offload machinery.  The ship is now sporting the new Wilhelmsen colour scheme, replacing the traditional orange. The ship was built in 2008 by Daewoo, Okpo with a 71,673 gt, 30,089 dwt, and a capacity of 7620 (RTE43) units.

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