Storm Over

 A reprieve, maybe short lived, from bad weather allowed for things to return to normal in the harbour today, December 7, with only a bit of swell remaining after last night's rain, thunder, lightning and wind. 

The high winds delayed the scheduled move of the American Roll-On Roll Off Carriers ship Tiger from Autoport to Pier 27 from yesterday afternoon until this morning. The ship was then able to unload its RoRo cargo and sail for New York without further delay at 1300 today.

On its way outbound, accompanied by the pilot boat Capt E.T.Rogers off its bow, it passsed the lobster boat Knot Lookin' Back out of Portuguese Cove. 

The start of the local lobster season was delayed from November 30 until December 1, due to bad weather. Fishers traditionally load their boats high with all their traps for "dumping day" and risk serious accidents and capsizing if the weather is bad. They all want to get their traps in the water as soon as possible, and claim their own "patch".

Knot Lookin' Back was built in 2018 by Hustler's Fibreglass Boats Ltd of Bloomfield, NS and features a port side shelter of translucent material. It appeared to be tending traps and placing new traps for the first time between Black Rock Beach (Point Pleasant Park) and PSA Halifax Pier 42. (Several traps were poised on the ship's rail ready to "launch").

At PSA Halifax Tropical Shipping's Tropical Lissette was finishing up its loading.

 The ship arrived yesterday morning, December 6, and was scheduled to sail last evening, but was delayed until this morning when high winds prevented the cranes from operating.

 Also in port, likely to shelter from bad weather, is the oil pollution clean up barge Fundy Responder which arrived from Saint John, NB in tow of the Atlasntic Larch on Sunday, December 5.

 

The barge was built in 1974 in Singapore as the AN 2803 and arrived in Canada in 1979 when Atlantic Towing acquired the tug Irving Teak (later Atlantic Teak and since scrapped) also from Singapore. It was renamed Irving Seal in 1980, then Seal VII in 1990 and got its present name in 2000.

It is owned by Atlantic Towing Ltd and works for Irving Oil as part of the Atlantic Emergency Response Team (ALERT) Inc, which is responsible for the oil industry voluntary pollution control program in the Bay of Fundy. They maintain a 10,000 tonne capacity for spill cleanup.

ALERT works with the Eastern Canada Response Corp (ECRC) which maintains a fleet of pollution control and cleanup craft in ports around the region. Halifax used to have a similar barge on standby in the harbour, but it was removed in 2018. After Imperial Oil closed its refinery, the risk of a large spill was greatly reduced.

The pollution cleanup barge John P. Oxley was towed out of Halifax for Sydney, NS by the tug Lois M June 9, 2018.

 Some ships that had been waiting offshore will now be arriving later in the day, including EM Kea for Maersk/CMA CGM transatlantic service and CMA CGM A.Lincoln for the Ocean Alliance Asia-North America loop.

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No Stripes on this Tiger

 The autocarrier Tiger arrived early this morning (December 6) and tied up at Autoport to offload cars. It is scheduled to move over to Pier 27 later this afternoon to work non-auto "high and heavy" RoRo cargo. [Its customary berth at Pier 31 is occupied by Augusta Luna which is unloading nickel sulphides from Cuba.]

Despite carrying a Wilhelmsen name (beginning with the letter "T") and sailing under Malta registry the ship appeared in ARC (Atlantic Roll-on Roll-off Carrier) livery. ARC is a Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) subsidiary headquartered in the United States and operating eight US flagged autocarriers. ARC's web site makes no mention of this ship or other non-US flag ships.

ARC's US flag ships have preference for US government contracts to transport vehicles and other cargoes. The company recently lost a contract for transporting military personnel household goods (it is appealing the award). 

Tiger is owned by Wilhelmsen Lines Shipowning, is managed by Wilhelmsen Ship Management, and  operates as a regular member of the combined Wallenius Wilhelmsen fleet. All the WWL entities, including EUKOR and United European Car Carriers appear have pooled their ships for operating efficiency. So there is no apparent reason why this ship should carry ARC paint unless there is a plan to transfer it to US flag.

Tiger was built in 2011 by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co in Okpo, South Korea. A 74,255 gt ship of 31,143 dwt it has a large capacity of 7,934 autos and is equipped with a 320 tonne capacity stern ramp for heavy cargo. It also has the customary, but little used side ramp.

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Some call it nostalgia...

 Having been around for a while I do recollect things that happened long ago. I realize however that my definition of long ago has changed and now must include events in years that seem fairly recent. Those events are now part of "history" and might be included in a trivia contest. It was therefore somewhat startling when I realized the subject of today's post happened no less than thirty years ago.

The Canadian Coast Guard acquired its "newest" arctic icebreaker in 1991, and decommissioned one of its best known ships.

The acquistion was the Terry Fox, an eight year old ship, leased from private industry, which began trials December 2, in advance of going into service in January of 1992. The ship it was to replace was CCGS John A. Macdonald which had reached the advanced age of 31. It was to make a paying off trip around Halifax harbour December 2 in advance of formal decommissioning on December 4, 1991. 

I have to wonder if the CCG knew then that thirty years later they still would not have a new polar icebreaker that they might have kept the John A. Macdonald going for a while longer, or acquired the Kalvik a twin sister of the Terry Fox. [see footnote below.]

 The Terry Fox on a trials trip in Halifax in December 1991.

The Terry Fox was built by Burrard-Yarrows Corp of Vancouver to support Gulf Canada Resources arctic oil projects. Gulf's Beaufort Sea work was carried out by its subsidiary Beaudrill, which needed icebreaking tug/ suppliers to work year round. The two 23,000 bhp ships were the most powerful privately owned icebreakers in the world when delivered in 1983. 

 

In 1991, with the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent in a major five year long conversion from steam to diesel electric, the CCG leased the Terry Fox from Beaudrill, with an option to purchase which was taken up in 1993.

On December 1, 1991 the Canadian Coast Guard hosted a public open house at the Dartmouth base, with tours of the Terry Fox and the John A. Macdonald.

 Getting ready to pay off, the John A. Macdonald still looked spendid.

During its thirty year career the John A. Macdonald acquired near legendary status. Built by Davie Shipbuilding in Lauzon, the 13,000 shp diesel electric vessel was perhaps best known for its role in the Manhattan's arctic trip, but the ship set many records, and made numerous voyages in the arctic (which was much more "arctic" than it is now) and the Gulf of St.Lawrence (ditto for winter).

 A quick survey of the Wikipedia entry for the ship is a good refresher: John A. Macdonald

Footnote:

Back in 1991 Shipfax was an eight page newlsetter (printed on a dot matrix printer) and my account of the visit to the Terry Fox and John A. Macdonald included the following:

"The contrast between the two ships is remarkable. Terry Fox is in every way a modern ship, which is conned from a comfortable padded seat where the QM is surrounded by all the controls and instruments within easy reach...[John A.] Macdonald is very much old school with engine room telegraphs of gleaming brass and ...requiring several persons on the bridge and a fully manned engine room."

The John A. Macdonald was laid up in Dartmouth, and finally left Halifax November 22, 1993 in tow of the Dutch tug Elizabeth for India where it was eventually broken up sometime in 1995. Presumably some of the artefacts pictured above have been kept for posterity.

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Follow Ups

 Several posts during the last week are in need of follow up, so this post combines three updates.

Update#1 Oceanex (from November 30)

Oceanex Sanderling arrived back in Halifax today (December 4) after making an extra trip to St.John's this week. The ship made Autoport its first stop, then moved to PSA Halifax. It is due to sailagain early tomorrow (Sunday) morning, about 36 hours later than its usual Friday sailing.

 Unique among container ships, Oceanex Sanderling carries 53 foot containers, both its own (blue) Oceanex boxes but those of other cariers such as Canadian Tire (a national hardware, houseware and auto supply chain).

Road wash outs in western Newfoundland delayed truck traffic to and from the island last week, and Oceanex took up some of the cargo by making a quick mid-week trip to Halifax and back to St.John's. Competitor Marine Atlantic was forced to shift its Newfoundland terminal from Port aux Basques to Argentia for a few days until damaged roads and bridges could be repaired. At one point there were 200 trucks waiting on the mainland side. 

Oceanex makes connections with container lines in Halifax so making an extra trip can mess up its normal schedule for coordinating with other same day callers. However the urgency of getting cargo to and from Newfoundland was more important.

Update #2 Kitikmeot W. (from December 2)

The Canadian-owned product tanker Kitikmeot W. did indeed change its registration while in Halifax this week. It sailed this evening under the Marshall Island's flag, with no destination given at first, but eventually showing Quebec City.

The ship is now registered in the port of Majuro while it works overseas for the winter on a bareboat charter arrrangement. The ship's history is quite plain to see on the stern with the previous registry ports of Istanbul, Turkey and St.John's, Newfoundland, still visible under layers of paint. 

The ship will likely return to Canadian flag in late May or early June 2022 in time for next year's northern supply work.

Update #3 MSC (from December 3)

Kotor Bay sailed this afternoon for Norfolk on MSC's Indus 2 service. As stated in the post, the majority of MSC's fleet is chartered. When the sun hit the ship's side at the right angle the name of its previous charter was highlighted.

 

The ship was built in 2009 for charter to Hyundai as Hyundai Loyalty and carried the name for twelve years. Charters of up to 18 years or more have been negotiated recently, and such arrangements are a common feature of container shipping. Charters allow operators to expand their fleet without actually financing or buying the ship. It is also a way for shipowners to find work for their ships without having to run a container line.

One interesting thing to note from today's photo is the complete absence of containers from any other container lines. There are boxes from leasing companies, but all the labelled containers appear to be MSC. This is a reflection of MSC's general independence and its policy of organic growth versus acquistion of other lines. By contrast Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd ships are usually a crazy quilt of containers bearing the names of past purchases or alliance partners.

Speaking of Maersk and CMA CGM, there is no ship scheduled for the Canada Atlantic Express (CAE) this weekend, but EM Kea is en route from Montreal giving Monday, December 6 as an arrival date instead of the usual Saturday call. It was likely delayed westbound by the bad weather earlier in the week.

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Kotor Bay in for MSC

MSC's weekly Indus 2 service brought in its eighth ship today (December 3). So far all the ships on the service have been new to Halifax and Kotor Bay is no exception. Built in 2009 by Hyundai Samho as Hyundai Loyalty it was renamed in February of 2021.

 It is a 94,479 gt, 95,810 dwt ship with a capacity of 8562 TEU. The ship arrived off Halifax November 29, which was its scheduled arrival day. However it remained at anchor, hove to or steaming about until this morning. That allowed the seventh ship on the service, MSC Silvana, to clear. It had been due November 18 but was delayed - largely due to weather.

When the Indus 2 weekly service from northwest India began its Halifax calls with the arrival of MSC Stella on October 5, it was reported that there would be eight ships on the rotation. It appears that some of the earlier ships will not be back, and other ships have been assigned. All are to be of the 8500 TEU size.

Several sources have declared that MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) has just passed Maersk as the world's largest container shipping company, or will do so by the end of the month. No matter who is correct, it is certainly an impressive achievement, and maybe a risky gamble.

MSC has been on a ship buying spree, since August 2020 purchasing 125 second hand ships. It currently has about 1 million TEUs of ships on order from shipyards. Its current fleet represents 633 ships of 4,239,668 TEUs. The majority of the ships are chartered. For example the above mentioned Kotor Bay which is part of the Eastern Pacific Shipping Pte fleet - one of the Ofer companies.

Maersk on the other hand has 729 ships in its fleet, totaling 4,234,302 TEU. (as of November 24, 2021). Maersk has a very small order book and is not projecting great growth in its fleet. Maersk also owns the majority of the ships in its fleet, but whether these are "bought and paid" or heavily financed and leveraged is not known to me.

In any event it must be a great time to be in the container business as many companies are reporting astronomical increases in returns year over year. Hapag-Lloyd for instance made more money in QI to Q3 of 2021 than it made in the previous five years combined. They are now charging $1,100 over cost to ship a container, versus $50 a year before.

One report says that the pre-pandemic August 2020 cost of shipping a container from East Asia to the US West Coast was $2,000. As of September 2021 that had grown to $20,000, however rates dropped by more than 20% in November after shippers were no longer pressing for pre-Chrsitmas deliveries to the US. The miserable schedule reliability rates (less than 50% of containers are meeting schedules) and the huge backlogs at key ports, while frustrating customers, do not seem to have diminshed the carriers profitability, or expansion plans - at least for now.

Shipping is a high stakes, high risk business, and how long MSC remains on top depends on whether Maersk decides to buy one of its competitors. That might give regulators fits since each line now controls 16.9% of the market. In any event MSC's putty coloured boxes will remain a common sight in Halifax whether on ships, trucks or rails.

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Kitikmeot W. and Pier 9c

The Canadian flag tanker Kitikmeot W. arrived in Halifax this morning (December 2) from Matane, QC and tied up at Pier 9C. 

Built in 2010 in Turkey by Icdas Celik Enerji Tersane ve Ulasim Sanagi to its own account as Icdas-09 it is a 13,097 gt, 19,983 dwt ice class chemical/product carrier. Coastal Shipping Ltd of Goose Bay, NL, part of the Woodward Group, acquired the ship and its sister Icdas-11 in 2018. (It became Qikiqtaaluk W. and was here November 21-22 [qv]).

After a summer working in the far north Kitikmeot W. is likely to be flagged out for the winter. It has been re-registered in the Marshall Islands from roughly December to the following May or June in 2019-20 and 2020-21 when it has returned to Canadian registration.

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Beans Out - Grain In

It has been an unusually busy time at the grain piers in Halifax. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating for several days, causing delays for two ships.  

The  bulk carrier St.Sophia arrived November 23 from Quebec City to top up its cargo with soy beans. That cargo is handled by the Halifax Grain Elevator Ltd and uses the grain conveyor system running from the storage silos through six grain spouts at Pier 28.

St.Sophhia was built in 2018 by Mitsui Tomano and is a 34,094 gt, 60,424 dwt vessel with four cargo handling cranes of unknown tonnage rating. Due to the moisture sensitive nature of the cargo, the ship could not load in the rainy weather over the past few days.

However it did manage to complete loading this afternoon (December 1) and sailed just at sunset for the Port of El Dekheila, in a suburb of Alexandria, Egypt.

Meanwhile the  Canadian bulker Radcliffe R. Latimer arrived November 25 from Thunder Bay with a cargo of wheat consigned to P+H Milling. The Halifax grain elevator provides storage space for the flour mill, and delievers the wheat as needed via a grain pipeline. Again, due to the moisture sensitive cargo, the Latimer could not unload in heavy rain. It was finally able to begin unloading today and will sail over night. With only a few weeks left in the St.Lawrence Seaway season, the ship will be heading back to the Great Lakes (via Lower Cove, Newfoundland).

The Port of Halifax owns the grain elevator structures, and leases the facility to Halifax Grain Elevator Ltd. The silos were built as a grain export facility when the government of Canada subsidized rail freight rates to facilitate grain exports.

 

The following is an exerpt from a previous post:

"The elevator, consisting of 365 silos, with a total capacity of 5,152,000 bushels was built in four stages: 1925, 1929, 1958 and 1963. The first stage was but to replace the previous elevator destroyed in the Halifax explosion. Later stages were prompted by amendments to the Crow’s Nest Pass Agreement. That 1897 deal, between the Canadian government and the Canadian Pacific Railway gave the railroad access to valuable mineral properties in exchange for reduced rates to haul grain and flour eastbound - in perpetuity. Well perpetuity for governments is not for ever! The rate was suspended during World War I, and was revised in 1927 (after the government had formed the Canadian National Railroad) and then applied to grain only and to all rail lines. The CPR deal had favoured the Port of Saint John, but with the new CNR serving Halifax, a bigger grain elevator was warranted.

From the 1930s through the 1960s Halifax was a major grain exporting hub. In those days the entire St.Lawrence River closed for the winter and Halifax stockpiled grain and shipped it from January to April in huge quantities. Often the elevator was full. The port of Halifax owns the grain elevator and leases it to operators Halifax Grain Elevator Ltd.

As I said perpetuity does not mean forever with governments and the rate was adjusted in 1984 by the Western Grain Transportation Act, but it was capped. In 1993 it was eliminated completely and the grain trade for Halifax fell away dramatically. Traffic had been eroding anyway with the opening of the St.Lawrence Seaway, winter navigation on the St.Lawrence and better connections to the Mississippi and the west coast."

With the virtual elimination of grain exports through Halifax, the grain silos are used for storing quantities of grain for local consumption, such as P+H Milling. They are also used to store wood pellets for export to Europe as hog fuel, and more recently for soy beans, which are exported. The soy beans arrive in Halifax by truck or rail.

The Port of Halifax provides an excellent aerial photo on its web site showing the entire facility:

Halifax Grain Facility

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