Supreme Ace at Autoport

 The auto carrier Supreme Ace arrived today, August 8, from Emden, Germany. After a brief stop at anchorage (likely for Asian LDA moth examination by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency) the ship proceeded to Autoport.

 

Owned by Mitsui OSK Lines of Japan and operating under their Auto Carrier Express (ACE) fleet of about 110 ships, the Supreme Ace was built in 2011 by Minami Nippon, Shitanoe. The 59,022 gt, 18,834 dwt ship has a capacity of 6,183 small cars or 5,063 medium size or 4,425 large cars. 

The ship appears to be on a variation of the company's normal Atlantic service, so is perhpas servicing a large demand for Volkswagen. Its previous ports were Veracruz, Mexico Jun 24-26; Sparrows Point, MD July 1, Davisville, RI, July 3, then to Emden July 25-28.

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Light Load on EC5

 Today's (August 7) arrival on THE Alliance's EC5 service is the Conti Contessa, a regular on the run for the last eleven months. Built as Ital Contessa by Samsung, Koje in 2006 it measures a hefty 90,449gt, 101,007 dwt with a considerable container capacity of 8084, including 700 reefers. It became Conti Contessa in 2019 under Conti11 Schiffahrts ownership and Niederelbe management.

The ship arrived from Norfolk, eastbound, and is relatively lightly loaded (see the top of its rudder peaking out from under the counter). It has lots of boxes aft (probably empties) but as far as payload is concerned it is obvious that the balance of trade is still cargo from the east and not to the east.

Although it is not felt on this particular route, there is a major shift underway to re-route cargo away from the congested West Coast of North America, in favour of the east coast via the Panama Canal - to the benefit of such ports as Savannah - and eventually possibly Halifax. The BigBox retailer Costco has even gone to the extent of chartering three ships for its own cargo. They will be calling in Halifax starting next month according to recent reports.

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Bow for AOPS 4

The megablock bow section for the fourth Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship has now been rolled out of the Assembly Hall at Halifax Shipyards and wheeled into position.

The fourth ship in the series is to be named HMCS William Hall AOPV 433 once it is commissioned into the RCN.

With the bow now aligned with the rest of the ship, the "attachement" process of welding the sections together will not take long, so there may be a launch later this year.

 The third Arctic Offshore Patrol ship, AOPS 3 the future HMCS Max Bernays AOPV 432 has already had its first sea trials, and is alongside the shipyard completing fit out. HMCS Margaret Brooke AOPV 431 is in "post-acceptance trials" and is expected to commission this fall and HMCS Harry DeWolf AOPV 430 is fully commissioned. 

The latter two were due to participate in the annual Operation Nanook exercises in northern waters this summer. However HMCS Harry DeWolf remains in port due to deficiencies in its fire suppression system. The RCN says its participation is "delayed". The other participants in the exercise sailed from Halifax on August 2.

Construction started on AOPS 5 in June. AOPS 6 and the two ships for the Canadian Coast Guard are still in the planning stages.

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BBC Austria - updated

 The multi-purpose / heavy lift vessel BBC Austria arrived today, August 4, initially at anchor, then moved to Pier 9C. The few hours at anchor were required by the Canadian Food Inpsection Agency to check for the larva of the invasive LDA moth. Because the ship had been in Asia recently, it was possible that the larva were present aboard. 

Once deemed to be clear of the dangerous pest, the ship was cleared to move to the pier.

The BBC Austria was built in 2009 by Tianjin Xingang in Tianjin, China. The 6967 gt, 7741 dwt ship carries two 250 tonne SWL cranes that can combine for a 500 tonne lift. The ship has removable tween decks and can carry a variety of cargo including a nominal 599 TEU (377 TEU at 14 tonnes) and has 60 reefer plugs. BBC Chartering is owned by Briese Schiffahrts of Germany and has a fleet of more than 150 ships. It is the largest multi-purpose and heavylift company.

Ships berth at Pier 9C for a variety of reasons, but my guess is that it is here to be fitted with prefabricated racks to carry fibreoptic cable.

Update:  Bad guess! The ship was in port for bunkers. The tank truck from RST delivered the fuel, presumably from Irving Oil.

 The ship arrived from Los Bocas, Mexico, and until it sails late this afternoon I will not know its destination port. (It originally sailed from Busan, South Korea June 11, and transited the Panama Canal July 9 -16 - likely after waiting in queue for several days.) 

2nd Update

The ship departed mid afternoon giving Oshwa, ON as its destination.

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More Reef Balls

The waters off Point Pleasant Park are receiving more reef balls. The perforated concrete structures have been placed on the bottom as improved fish habitat, but also as an offset of possible damage to existing habitat with port expansion. With more expansion set to get underway crews from Dominion Diving Ltd were on scene today placing scores of new balls.

 This morning's fog did not prevent the local cormorant population from supervising work as the tug Dominion Rumbler and workboat Halmar moved the deck barges Dominion Mercury and Dominion Jupiter into position.

Dominion Mercury carried a small mobile crane and Dominion Jupiter had a deck load of the reef balls. As the crane lowered the balls into the water, divers assisted in final positioning.

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Neither fog nor rain...

 Shipfax is not the US postal service, so fog and rain and other conditions such as heat and gloom of night, certainly do prevent complete coverage of activities in Halifax harbour. Fortunately fog and rain such as that experienced today, August 2, are not constant, so the odd glimpse of ship movements is possible.

The auto carrier Oberon arrived yesterday, August 1, from Southampton, UK on the Wallenius Wilhelmsen transatlantic route. (Previous ports were Goteborg, Bremerhaven and Zeebrugge). The ship berthed first at Pier 9C and disgorged a huge quantity of machinery and a variety of odd shaped and oversize general cargo on Mafi trailers. The latter included large crates and at least one helicopter. As of last evening when the following photo was taken the ship was still offloading. (They had to unload and reload a good many cars to get access to all that cargo).

There was already cargo on the pier from the last ship, so the area is now quite crowded. Non automobile cargo is offloaded at Pier 9C as generally only automobiles and light trucks are handled at Autoport, which is set up to service cars and load them on multi-level enclosed rail cars or delivery trucks.

This morning when the Oberon was ready to move to Autoport, the fog had reached legendary density (over the water) but was a little clearer on Pier 9C. It was still too thick to see across the Narrows.

The blue cranes for the Sarens crane rental company, arrived on a previous ship as did at least some of the yellow JCBs. Crews are lashing down the cranes on rail cars.

It may be too much to hope for clearing when the ship departs Autoport for New York later this afternoon. However if it does, a photo may magically appear in this space.

Oberon is classed as an LCTC (Large Car and Truck Carrier) of 71,673 gt, 30,134 dwt with a capacity of 7620 RT43 autos. It was built by Daewoo Shipbuilding + Marine Engineering Co, Okpo in 2008 and is equipped with a 320 tonne capacity stern ramp. It is owned and operated by Wallenius Marine in the co-owned joint venture Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean (WWO) formed in 2017. 

Wilhelm Wilhelmsen of Norway and Wallenius Lines of Sweden orginally joined their operations in 1999. The land based logistics and other operations were split off in 2017 and the shipping group got its own identity as WWO. The ships have been repainted in a common scheme of teal over gray replacing the orginal green hulls of Wallenius and red/orange of Wilhelmsen.

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Two Cruise Day

 Seeing two cruise ships in port is not unusual during the height of the cruise season in September and October, but it is rare in the mid-summer. Therefore today's two ships was notable.

The familiar Caribbean Princess arrived on its usual itinerary from New York (July 27) and Saint John, NB (July 31) as it begins its seasonal shift from the Caribbean and its Port Everglades base.

 

 

The big ship, at 112,894 gt, was built in 2004 by Fincantieri, Monfalcone and has become well known for its unsual lounge perched out over the stern. (It has thus acquired the nickname "the Shopping Cart"). The Carnival brand Princess Cruise Lines (operating in the Holland America Group) claims a passenger capacity of 3142 lower berths (3600 total berths) and 1200 crew on nineteen decks.

The other ship is not familiar, and in fact is a first time caller. Nieuw Statendam was built in 2018, by Fincantieri Breda in Marghera. The 99,902 gt ship has a capacity of 2,666 passengers (in lower berths) with a crew of 1053. If all berths are occupied it has a maximum nunber of persons on board of 4,173.

The ship is on a lengthy repositioning trip that orginated in Copenhagen July 16. It called in Alesund, Norway July 18, then to Iceland with stops in Akureyri July 20, Isafjordur July 21, Reykjavik July 22, Grundarfjordur Jul 24 then to Qaqortoq and Nanortalik, Greenland July 27 and 28 and St.John's Newfoundland July 30. The cruise will end August 3 in Boston.

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