Big Blow

Mild temperatures mean high winds at this time of year and as the thermometer climbed to 13 degrees C winds clocked gusts of 100 kph along the coast. Naturally this meant that pilotage operations were suspended all day and will not resume until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

There were very high wind gusts in the harbour and the tanker Avon moved from Imperial Oil jetty 3 to an anchorage in Bedford Basin.

Avon at Imperial Oil yesterday.

The ship is less than a year old. Delivered by Hyundai Mipo in January 2019, it measures 29,528 gt, 49,999 dwt.

Tugging at its anchor this morning in Bedford Basin.

The wind driven salt spray restricted visibility somewhat but HMCS Shawinigan was able to carry out some exercises in the same area. It was joined by HMCS Glace Bay.

Ships requiring pilots have been standing by off Halifax until conditions improve. The small container ship Tropical Lissette which sailed yesterday afternoon sought shelter overnight in St. Margaret's Bay, anchoring well up the bay off Fox Point all day today and likely all night tonight. The Bay, just west of Halifax, is not a mandatory pilotage area.

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Strange Visitors

Most ships that call in Halifax these days are predictable to a degree. Many are "liners", assigned to a particular container line, and filling a scheduled slot on the rotation with regular calls in Halifax. Therefore today's arrival of MSC Eleni was an odd occurrence. MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) is not a regular caller in with its own ships, although it partners with others. The ship normally serves Montreal, and seems to be headed there next, so why it has called here is a question.

Partly hidden behind Tropical Shipping containers, MSC Eleni works cargo at pier 42, with a decidedly un-tropical foreground.

MSC Eleni was built by Hanjin Heavy Industries, Busan in 2004. It measures 54,881 gt, 68,254 dwt and has a capacity of 5060 TEU, including 400 reefers.

Ships calling for bunkers are also a rarity now that Halifax has no bunkering tanker. However Daisy tied up at pier 27 for that purpose en route from Baltimore for Grande Anse, QC.  

A cell phone, through the fence photo was the best I could do for the Daisy.

Daisy was launched as Beluga Constitution but completed as Beluga Constellation in 2006. The hull was built by Damen's Okean shipyard in Mykolayiv, Ukraine and towed to the Volharding Foxhol yard in the Netherlands for completion. The 10,899 gt, 12,767 dwt ship became HR Constellation in 2011 and Daisy in 2017. Current operators United Heavylift specialize in wind turbine transport, but there did not seem to be much if any cargo on board. Although they are not visible in the photo, the ship carries a pair of 240 tonne capacity cranes.

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Victorious Ace

Among the many Mitsui OSK Line aurocarriers with Ace names, Victorious Ace may be a first timer in Halifax. Built in 2011 by the Minami-Nippon yard in Shitanoe, it is 59,022 GT, 18,396 dwt ship with a capacity of up to 6,163 cars.

As Victorious Ace sails, the integrated tug/barge Leo A. McArthur/ John J. Carrick are visible at the McAsphalt dock in Easter Passage. 

Last night's snow fall was rapidly melting away, but there were a few patches in some places on the Dartmouth shore.

Captain E.T.Rogers working as pilot boat today, works its way outbound to disembark the pilot from Victorious Ace.

Victorious Ace is eastbound on this trip, giving Antwerp as its next port of call.

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Boabarge to ground zero

On the 102nd anniversary of the great explosion that killed and maimed several thousand people and  laid waste to much of north end Halifax there were several quiet ceremonies commemorating the event, including in Fort Needham Memorial Park. The explosion shaped the future of Halifax in many ways, not least of Halifax Shipyard.

The memorial bell tower on Fort Needham, high above Pier 6.

In 1917 the Halifax Graving Dock Co was a small repair yard. The graving dock itself was an important facility, particularly during war time, where it was able to accommodate military and civilian vessels in need of drydocking. The fire and subsequent explosion that resulted from the collision of the ships Mont Blanc and Imo, took place only 300 meters from the Graving Dock in the area in the Narrows off pier 6 and has become known as Ground Zero.

Remarkably, Samuel L. Brookfield, owner of the yard, was able to get it back up and running within a month of the explosion despite most of the buildings being flattened and the equipment damaged or destroyed.

For his efforts the Canadian government, under Prime Minister Robert Borden (a Nova Scotian) expropriated the shipyard and essentially gave it to a group of Montreal speculators as part of a grandiose plan to built a Canadian merchant ship fleet. The repair yard soon became a fully fledged shipbuilding yard, one of the keystones of the British Empire Steel and Coal Co, and later the Dominion Steel and Coal Co (DOSCO) Canada's largest employer.

It took Brookfield nearly twenty years to have his compensation claim settled in court. The shipyard has off and on been a political pawn and its fortunes have also had many ups and downs ever since. Currently on a roll under the ownership of Irving Shipbuilding Inc, the pier 6 area is just a part of the yard's laydown area, with no special note being made of its importance.

The Narrows and Halifax Shipyard as seen from the Dartmouth shore. 

Pier 6 is in the centre of the photo, adjacent to the large building.

This morning, not long after the commemoration ceremonies on Fort Needham, tugs moved the Boabarge 37 from the IEL dock in Woodside to pier 6 9c.

The barge has been chartered by Irving Shipbuilding Inc (ISI) as a launch vessel for the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships built under the National Shipbuilding Strategy. Its deck currently carries a number of cradles that have been prepped for the roll out of the third vessel in the current shipbuilding program. That operation is expected early in the new year.

In view of the proximity of the explosion, and the loss of life in the shipyard due to the explosion, I hope ISI was able to make some sort of remembrance as part of its workday today.

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All Canada Day

There was no foreign flag shipping in Halifax harbour today. All shipping was Canadian - surely a very rare occurrence.

The Royal Canadian Navy's chartered supply ship Asterix returned to port yesterday after a maintenance session at parent shipyard Davie in Lévis, QC. It refueled at the Irving Oil dock in Dartmouth and this morning moved to jetty Juliet in HMC Dockyard. (Its place at Irving was taken by HMCS Fredericton which sailed later.)

During a brief snow shower, the coastal ConRo Oceanex Sanderling arrived from St.John's.

Nolhanva slipped into port around noon time and tied up at pier 27 - not its usual berth at Cerescorp, Fairview Cove.

And late this afternoon Radcliffe R. Latimer sailed after unloading its part load of grain. The ship is bound for Lower Cove, NL in ballast.

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Some grain for Halifax

Normally when grain arrives in Halifax from Thunder Bay by ship, it is in full loads. However today's arrival of Radcliffe R. Latimer marks a departure from the norm.

It was quite apparent as the ship approached pier 25-26 that it was carrying less than a full cargo. A little digging revealed that the ship took a full cargo at Superior Elevators in Thunder Bay on about November 21, but on its way down through the Great Lakes it was diverted to P&H's facility in Hamilton, ON where it appears to have left about half its cargo.  P&H Milling [Parrish and Heimbecker] also operate the flour  mill in Halifax (the former Dover Mills) and so perhaps the cargo was kept "in house" so to speak. Nevertheless it is an unusual event.

P+H in Halifax brings in most of its grain by rail, so does not depend on ships to keep up its supply. However the recent rail strike may have been a factor in all this. Almost all the grain moving through the port of Halifax is for local consumption either for milling or for animal feed. Some small quantities are sometimes exported for food aid.

Radcliffe R. Latimer is the former Algobay of 1978, extensively rebuilt in China in 2009 and renamed in 2012. It is likely to load gypsum after unloading its grain.

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CMA CGM Tage

PSA Halifax (the terminal formerly known as Halterm) welcomed CMA CGM Tage today. Its early morning arrival in darkness precluded photos, but a view from Dartmouth gave a good idea of the size of the ship. It has been a regular caller on the Columbus JAX service since 2016, and carries the distinction of being the first large split superstructure container ship to call in Halifax. At one time it also held the record as the largest container ship to call in Halifax.

With the its decks piled high it is difficult to find the ship's bridge structure (directly under the middle of the three cranes - between the letters C and M) and its engine casing / funnel (under the tip of the right / northmost, crane.) No wonder some crews are nervous about safety in case of fire on such ships.

Built in 2015 by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co, it is a 95,263 gt, 112,500 dwt ship with a container capacity of 9,365 TEU including 1458 reefers.

For a more conventional view of the ship see: http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2016/10/cma-cgm-anniversary-etc.html
or also this from October 1, 2016:

 I believe the ship is carrying at least one more tier of boxes on deck now, and possibly two tiers in places. If so the TEU figures quoted are likely obsolete.

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