Hong Kong Eagle - Basin anchorage

 A rare bulk carrier visit to Halifax, the Marshal Island flagged / US owned  Hong Kong Eagle anchored in Bedford Basin last evening and is due to sail tonight, tomorrow, March 1.

The ship arrived from Port Cartier, QC and likely tangled with ice inbound or outbound from that Gulf of St.Lawrence port. I noted the diving tender Captain's Pride alongside this afternoon, so my guess is a bent or nicked prop blade or blades - a common enough winter problem.

The ship is owned by the Stamford, CT based [NASDAQ traded] Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc. The 47 ship fleet consists of Ultramax and Supramax ships in the 50,000 to 65,000 deadweight tonnes range, all fitted with cranes and grabs.

Hong Kong Eagle came out of the Jiangsu Newyangzi Shipbuilding Co, Jingjiang, China in 2016 with a gross tonnage of 36,338 and 63,472 dwt. It carries four cranes and four grab buckets of 12m3 capacity. Port-Cartier is a major iron ore shipping port, operated by ArcelorMittal. Concentrate and pellets from iron ore extracted from the Mont-Wright mine and shipped through the private port, totaled 26 mn tonnes in the year 2020. 

The Louis Dreyfus company also operates a grain handling facility at Port Cartier, but this ship looks more like an ore carrier.

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MSC - makes up for

 It was very quiet at PSA Halifax until late in the day - unusual for a Saturday. The Maersk / CMA CGM North Atlantic service ship Maersk Patras, which would normally have called outbound from Montreal skipped Halifax this week and headed directly for Bremerhaven. Maersk Line previously announced several service changes, bypassing certain ports citing extreme winter weather conditions. (This is the third week in a row with no call in Halifax.)

The CMA CGM Columbus Loop service would also normally have had a ship in port today too, but there was nothing nearby, so perhaps the voyage was blanked. This has also happened with several lines this winter, for a variety of factors including Chinese New Year, lack of available containers in Asia and congestion at several US ports.

The one ship that did arrive at PSA Halifax was MSC Donata en route from Liverpool, UK to Montreal, here to lighter off some cargo to meet St.Lawrence River draft restrictions.

From the appearance of the ship it looks to be loaded to capacity in terms of the number of containers, and is showing a draft of  11.7m. Allowable draft in the Port of Montreal is 10.8m for container ships, but may be somewhat less between Montreal and Quebec City seasonally. Therefore the ship will be offloading a good many boxes to take a meter or so off the draft.

MSC Donata dates from 2002 when it was built by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries Co Ltd, Yeongam, South Korea. It is a 40,108 gt vessel of 52,806 dwt with a capacity of 4132 TEU and is fitted with 500 reefer plugs.

MSC has scheduled the ship to call in Halifax again next week when it is outbound from Montreal, this time to max out its capacity.

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Niagara Highway

The autocarrier Niagara Highway made its first call in Halifax today on K-Line's North Atlantic Shuttle Service [NAS]. That service connects the major European exporting ports (Barcelona, Bremerhaven, Zeebrugge, Southampton) to East Coast North America's distribution ports (Halifax, Baltimore, Brunswick, Jacksonville, Charleston).

The ship is the last of a series of thirteen PostPanamax carriers to be built for K-Line by Tadostsu Shipyard Co, Yokohama. Delivered in 2019, it has a gt of 75,528 and dwt of 21,052, giving a capacity of 7500 cars. Although very efficient ships, they will be outclassed by K-Line's newest series of dual fuel diesel / LNG vessels now under construction.

With somewhere in the range of 80 car carriers in its fleet, the company is feeling the effects of the current economy, and laying up or scrapping vessels to suit conditions. Their total fleet  exceeds 475 ships according to most sources, and they are cutting back in other sectors, including dry bulk. On the other hand they are partners in Ocean Network Express [ONE] with a 31% share along with MOL, also 31%, and NYK, 38%. Container lines are doing very well these days due to a surge in demand for domestic products.

K-Line car carriers are given "Highway" names for which there is likely no limit to potential choices, although some may seem somewhat strange, since there are no actual highways with those names.

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Biggish and Smallish

Today's container ship arrivals included a ship that is about the largest that Cerescorp's Fairview Cove terminal can handle, and a feeder ship for PSA Halifax, that is considered small by current standards.

Dalian Express at 88,493 gt and 100,006 dwt measures 320.4m long and 42.9m breadth, with a container capacity of 7506 TEU including 700 reefers. Built in 2001 by Hyundai, Ulsan, it was called Hamburg Express until 2011 when the name was appropriated for an even larger ship, a 13,196 TEU vessel. Dalian Express and sister ship Yantian Express (famous for its January 2019 fire) are currently the largest ships to call at Fairview Cove.

Dalian Express took three tugs inbound due to windy conditions.

Cerescorp could conceivably handle larger ships if they could fit under the two bridges across Halifax harbour, but so far that has not happened. THE Alliance continues to serve Halifax, on its EC5 service, both eastbound and westbound, but it seems we have the most restrictive air draft of the other east coast ports on the route. (New York, Savannah, Jacksonville and Norfolk.)

At the other end of the harbour PSA Halifax greeted the first time caller Fouma on what is now ZIM's Canada Feeder Express (CFX) replacing the Tampa Trader. See this post for more on that ship.

Fouma was built in 2007 by Zhejiang Ouhua Shipbuilding Co Ltd in Zhoushan, and at 15,375 gt, 19,288 dwt has a capacity of 1296 TEU (reefer capacity not published) and carries a pair of 45 tonne cranes. It was delivered as Maersk Recife and carried that name until 2010. The ship's capacity rivals that of some of the first generation container ships that were considered giants in their day, and its gross tonnage exceeds the last generation of general cargo ships of the 1960s and 1970s.

ZIM's weekly feeder schedule shows Taipei Trader (1102 TEU) and Fouma handling the CFX until August.

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Imedghassen move

 The broken down ship Imedghassen has been occupying the space at Pier 34 since its arrival here on January 9. That berth is seldom used for cargo work these days, and is usually reserved for ships under repair, and the CSL bulker Baie St.Paul is due here tomorrow, and has been assigned to the pier.

Therefore Imedghassen moved this afternoon, with assistance of the tug Atlantic Willow, to Pier 9C. The ship's name does not appear on future schedules for Melfi Lines, so apparently it will not be going to work for the Cuba run. With container carrying ships in short supply and shipping rates at an all time high, the owners must be eager to get the ship back to work. For whatever reason however, the ship is still stuck in Halifax.

Longshore workers attend to the mooring lines at Pier 9C .

The Arabic script on the ship's bow reminds me that Algerian ships in particular are rare callers here. The last one I can recall is the cargo ship Biban which spent the Christmas to New Year period in Halifax in 1979-1980.

I told the story of the Biban in a Tugfax post in 2015.

To summarize, the ship Biban, built in 1977 by Marine Industries Ltd in Sorel, QC*,  and owned buy the Algerian state shipping company, had a main engine breakdown in Duluth, Minnesota in June 1979. It was towed down through the Great Lakes to Montreal in July, where it languished until December when the legendary French tug Abeille 30 came to fetch it. The tow line parted in the Gulf of St.Lawrence, causing some damage to the ship, which resulted in tug and tow coming to Halifax where the ship was drydocked for hull repair.

Biban in  Halifax - another distressed Algerian.

With the ship out of drydock December 31, 1979 the tug lost no time in rigging the tow again, and they sailed January 1, 1980. The ship's engine was repaired in Europe and it returned to service until early 2003 when it was broken up in India.

 The Abeille 30 has the Biban in tow again, heading for Europe on New Year's Day 1980.

To my recollection Biban was the first, last and until recently the only Algerian ship to call in Halifax.

*The now vanished Marine Industries Ltd (MIL) shipyard in Sorel-Tracy, QC was a major Canadian shipbuilder, with upwards of 400 ships to its credit, including numerous naval craft. In the mid 1970s they built a series of cargo ships for Polish, French and Greek owners, plus two for Algeria: Biban and sister Babor.

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MOL Glide - first timer REVISED: second time

 A new to Halifax ship arrived early this morning at Cerescorp, Fairview Cove. REVISION: MOL Glide arrived in Halifax for the second time. See previous post: http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2021/01/mol-glide-for-first-time.html

MOL Glide is operating on THE Alliance's Atlantic Loop 1 service. The 59,307 gt, 71,339 dwt ship has a capacity of 5100 TEU. It was built in 2011 by Hyundai Samho apparently for German investors, and is managed by Hanseatic Unity Chartering.

The ship passed Halifax on February 9, on the westbound leg of its transatlantic trip, (it was not scheduled to stop.)

The Atlantic Loop 1 (AL1) service operates from Rotterdam, Hamburg, London Gateway, Norfolk, Philadelphia, New York, Halifax. In January it was announced that this service will be cancelled in the second quarter of 2021 and the Halifax port call will be added to the AL5 (also known as the EC5) service on both east and west bound legs.

I foresee a lot of unpredictability in that Loop 5 service since it runs from Europe all the way to Vancouver, BC via Panama, with calls at all the backlogged US west coast ports. Other lines with more short haul transatlantic runs, such as MSC, are likely to pick up the slack.

THE Alliance is operated by HAPAG-Lloyd, Ocean Network Express (ONE), Yang Ming and Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM).

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Maersk Skipped Halifax

 The four North Atlantic services to the US operated by Maersk and partners are rotating planned omissions of trips between January and the end of March. Due increasingly severe winter weather in recent years, reliability had become an issue. These shifts are intended to allow ships to  maintain schedules, by diverting cargoes to alternate services where available.

Maersk's CAE service does not seem to be effected by this change. It runs Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Antwerp to Montreal westbound and via Halifax eastbound. Operating with three"P" class ships and the charter EM Kea, they usually call in Halifax on Saturdays. However this past weekend there was no call since EM Kea was still in Montreal. It has now departed directly for Bremerhaven. Schedules are vague about further calls over the next few weeks. Although Maersk Penang is still scheduled for February 27, there is no scheduled call next week by Maersk Patras. Fleet mate Maersk Palermo is due next on March 6.

I grabbed this great Quebec City view of EM Kea before the neighbours chased me away from this million dollar view!

The handsome ship was built by Stocznia Szczecinska Nowa in Poland in 2007. Measuring 35,824 gt, 42,166 dwt, it has a capacity of 3108 TEU. It was built as Cap Norte, then renamed Cap Egmont in 2012 for charters to Hamburg-Sud. It was renamed EM Kea in 2015 and began to run on the Maersk service in the same year. Maersk publicizes a 3091 TEU capacity, while other sources report 3108 TEU.

Year round service on the North Atlantic can be grueling and despite this year being fairly light as far as ice is concerned, navigating the St.Lawrence in winter can also be dicey and delays can be expected. The only way for the CAE service to make up lost time is to delete the Halifax outbound call.

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