Slow boat to Montreal MSC Leandra V

 A ship that called in Halifax last week, en route to Montreal has not arrived there yet. Ironically, once (and maybe still), the fastest containership in the world, it is still more or less en route after five days.

 

MSC Leandra V arrived in Halifax January 4 to reduce its draft to transit the St.Lawrence River. [I gave the ship's particulars in the January 4 post, including its 30 knot designed cruising speed.] When it sailed late that evening it gave the unusual destination of Sept-Iles, QC. That port is primarily known for handling huge quantities of iron ore but not containers. 

On arrival in Sept-Iles yesterday (January 8) it anchored in the large bay and on the port's website was shown to be in for "réparations". What those repairs might have been and why they could not have been accomplished in Halifax is not known. [One possible explanation is that ships at anchor in Halifax must have engines in operating order. If not, they must have tug(s) along side. Also anchorages are at a premium in Halifax .]

The ship sailed from Sept-Iles January 8 and picked up its pilot off Escoumins. After proceeding up river just less than 100 miles it came about and sailed back down river to the Rasades anchorage off the Escoumins pilot station. 

Thanks to a social media post, I learned that the ship is now awaiting a suitable tide to proceed upstream. The ship's air draft is such that it needs a low tide to clear the Quebec Bridges. The clearance under those bridges is 151 feet at high water. However the tidal range at Quebec at this time of the year is 10 to 15 feet, so timing will be critical. [The ship would not be able clear the Halifax bridges no matter the state of the tide. The generally accepted clearance number is 154 feet with a tidal range of four to eight feet.]

 

Not only is the ship's superstructure very tall, it had to sacrifice a bay of container capacity to install the free standing exhaust gas scrubber tower.

As noted from my photos of the ship's arrival here, it has a very high superstructure. Combined with the reduced (water) draft, its air draft is apparently very close to the maximum allowable under those bridges. With the number of ships in the MSC fleet, surely they could find one that would not have to contend with this issue.

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Pier 9C - a useful spot

 The Port of Halifax accomodates ships for reasons in addition to the usual loading and unloading of cargo. Today January 8 there were two ships at Pier 9C that fitted that miscellaneous category.

The self-unloading bulk carrier Shiela Ann arrived initially at the Gold Bond dock on January 6 and took on a load of gypsum. That process would normally have taken 24 hours or less, but the ship remained alongside until this morning when it moved to Pier 9C.

 On arriving at the Pier there were at least three trucks with semi-trailers loaded with crates, and a crane set up on the brow. The contents of the crates were unknowable, however there were reels, which may be replacement conveyor belting. 

The Shiela Ann was built by Jingnan, Shanghai in 1999 for CSL International and assigned to their self-unloader pool. Two other ships of the same design, the Sophie Oldendorff and CSL Spirit were built by the same yard also for use in the pool in 2000 and 2001 respectively. (When Oldendorff Carriers withdrew from the CSL pool, Algoma purchased the Sophie Oldendorff and renamed it Algoma Vistory in 2019.)

Most of the ports where the Shiela Ann calls are long jetties without truck access or are relatively remote from the source of parts and supplies. Recent ports for the ship include Puerto Drummond in Colombia where it loaded coal November 2-7 for Rio Haina, Dominican Republic (November 11-13) then again loading at Puerto Drummond November 15-17 for Puerto Quetzal Guatemala December 10-11, reached via the Panama Canal December 5-7.  It then returned to Panama December 14, presumably in ballast, and queued up for the Canal, finally locking through December 28 en route for Halifax.

The Shiela Ann is expected to sail early this evening for Tampa, FL.

Just to the south, at the same long pier was the coastal tanker Kivalliq W. It arrived January 6 from Nanticoke, ON and after discharging petroleum product at Imperial Oil, moved to Pier 9C last night. As mentioned in the previous post, the ship normally flags out for the winter. If it will be doing that during its current stay at Pier 9C it will not be difficult to obscure the ship's current port of registry (St.John's) - it has the smallest size lettering I have ever seen! [Barely visible between the ship's name and its IMO number].

 There was also a truck alongside with a refuse skip, which suggests that the ship may be in for a period of maintenance before resuming work under its foreign flag. Since 2017 the flag of choice has been the Marshall Islands, but from December 2022 to June 2023 it was the Portuguese offshore flag of Madeira.

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The last of the summer fuel and make way for nickel

 1. Last of the Summer Fuel

 The Imperial Oil Dock #3 is the busiest spot in the harbour as the last shipments of fuel arrive from the Great Lakes. With the St.Lawrence Seaway now closed for the winter, Imperial will no longer have tanker access to its refineries in Sarnia and Nanticoke, ON, so has been stockpiling product. Three last tankers arriving in quick succesion are:

The Qikiqtaaluk W. which sailed from Nanticoke December 30 and made its way downbound in the St.Lawrence Seaway January 1, arriving in Halifax yesterday afternoon (January 5). Built in 2011 by Icdas, Bigas, Turkey it operated as Icdas 11 and carried that name until acquired by Coastal Shipping Ltd of Happy Valley - Goose Bay, NL in 2018. It is a 13,097 gt, 19,198 dwt. chemical and product tanker. (The ship was named for the huge eastern portion of Nunavut, formerly known as the Baffin region of Canada's Arctic.)

It was in port for less than 24 hours and sailed late this afternoon (January 6) in ballast for St.John's.

Every year since 2018 and from roughly January 1 the ship has been flagged out to operate internationally. Depending on contracts for delivering fuel to the arctic, the ship has returned to Canadian flag from as early as April 1 to as late as July 1 the following year. At the end of the northern shipping season it has participated in the stockpiling of fuel here in Halifax, and I expect it to flag out again this year.

While outbound this afternoon the Qikiqtaaluk W. met its fleetmate Kivalliq W. inbound also with product from Nanticoke. It sailed from that port January 1 and was downbound in the Seaway the next day. It was followed closely later the same day by the Algoberta, also bound for Halifax, and which will anchor when it arrives tonight.

The Kivalliq W. usually flags out for the winter too, so was likely given prioity at the dock. Algoberta will join fleetmate Algoscotia distributing product around the region this winter.

2. Make Way for Nickel 

The big bulker Athina III (see January 4 post) has been loading soybeans at Pier 27 since January 5 but halted operations at midnight last night and moved out to anchorage number 1 in the lower harbour. This was to make way for the Augusta Luna with the latest load of nickel sulfides from Cuba. Sailing for Nirint Shipping BV, it is on a regular run between European ports and Cuba. [See December 25, 2022 ]. On the return leg it unloads bagged nickel sulfides directly to rail cars or to storage at Pier 28. There is not room enough for both ships at Pier 27-28 at the same time, and no other pier is available for the nickel cargo or for bulk grains. Expansion of the South End Container Terminal (operated by PSA) displaced the nickel operation from Pier 31 where there was open pier space, a rail siding and a transit shed. The shed has been demolished and the open pier space is now devoted to container storage and construction activity. There is now only one trasit shed in the deepwater piers area of the port. The Richmond Terminal in the north end has transit sheds but they are all occupied with other business, and in any event rail access is not as convenient.

 The Athina III is due to move back to Pier 28 tonight when the Augusta Luna sails. It appears to be about half loaded, so will be in port for a few more days.

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An antique by any other name

 The Mediterranean Shipping Co MSC is well known for operating older ships. Today (January 4) their MSC Leandra V arrived in Halifax and lived up to that reputation but not in the usual way. At seventeen years of age it is not old by MSC standards. Some of the line's recent callers are approaching thirty. Instead it is the ship's appearance that makes it look much older.

Ships with engines and superstructure amidships must be in the dinosaur category nowadays. In the early days of steam, where engines and bunkers required large amounts of space, they were installed amidhips. As propulsion systems shifted to oil fired then to internal combustion less space was required. Ship designers also maximized cargo capacity by using the widest part of the hull for cargo. Moving the engines aft meant that the long shaft tunnel, which used up valuable cargo space, could also be eliminated.

With the evolution of bulk carriers and container ships came the development of smaller engines and more efficient engines and reduced ship speed. Some early container ships were built for speed and had cruising velocities in the high 20 knots range.

MSC Leandra V was built by Volkswerft in Stralsund, Germany to their VW5000 design and launched in 2007 for the A.P.Moller-Maersk British subsidiary Maersk Co Ltd as Maersk but was renamed on delivery as Maersk Buffalo. In 2011 it became the Buffalo but in 2012 was renamed Maersk Buffalo, then was briefly named Seago Istanbul before becoming MSC Leandra also in 2012.  In June 2023 the Roman numeral "V" was added to the name to denote a nominal container capacity up to 5,000 TEU.

The ship measures 49,477 gt and 53,701 dwt with a current capacity of 4170 TEU or 4504 TEU (depending on the source). The most startling statistic however is its cruising speed rating of 29.2 knots (55 kph) (versus 24 knots for previous high speed container ships). Even more startling was the maximum speed of 37 knots (69 kph)- a speed rarely exceeded even by warships. Express speeds for container ships were often specified for ships that were designated for potential military use, but Maersk was not forthcoming on that possibility. 

The ship was part of the seven ship Maersk B class that were the world's fastest container ships intended to maintain a high speed service between China and the United States. They proved uneconomical immediately and with the economic downturn of the time, the ships were laid up on delivery. None of the ships ever operated on the intended service. When they did enter service, between Asia and Europe, reducing speed to 12 knots also reduced feul consumption dramatically - from a reported 300 tonnes per day to 50 tonnes per day. (All figures are approximate and are an average of numbers from various sources,)

 In order to produce that 29 knots, the ship needed the world's largest marine diesel engine. The Wartsila-Sulzer 12 cylinder unit develops 93,360 hp (68,640 kW) and had to be installed amidships as the lines at the stern were so fine that there was no room. (A subsequent 14 cylinder version of the engine is now the world's largest, but also powers ships twice the size of this one.)

The ship's fine lines were evident today as the ship arrived from Mediterranean ports via Sines, Portgual on the CANEX1 service. (It was also here December 3, but wasn't seen in the dark and was not mentioned on this blog.) Its recorded average speed on this trip was 13.8 knots with a maximum of 18.3 knots. After dropping off a few containers here to reduce draft it will be on its way to Montreal.

Just to put age in perspective the truly venerable Oceanex Sanderling also arrived this morning.

Many lines operate ships in the 15 to 20 year old range but Oceanex maintains the Oceanex Sanderling, now age 47, on the weekly Halifax / St.John's service. The ship is virtually irreplaceable due to its costly container and RoRo (CONRO) configuration, an increasingly rare type of ship.

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Morning Christina and yes winter must be here

 The Eukor car carrier Morning Christina made a late morning arrival today, January 3, and docked directly at Autoport. I believe this is the ship's first call in Halifax, so it is worth a little extra note.

It was close to noon when the ship came into view, but because of heavy cloud cover onshore and clearing offshore it looked more like sunrise.

Imabari Shipbuilding constructed the ship at their Marugame shipyard in 2010. The 59,601 gt, 18,703 dwt ship has a reported capacity of 6,142 CEU. This is the typical size for Eukor ships, but is smaller than the usual such ships we see here. Those larger ships of up to 8,000 CEU usually belong to Wallenius Wilhelmsen - the parent of Eukor (Hyundai and Kia own 20% of Eukor.) The Eukor fleet now consists of about 80 ships. Some pooling of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean's ships and Eukor's ships has always existed - allowing ships to be reassigned as needed.

The size of the ship's funnel suggests that it is equipped with an exhaust gas scrubber system installed in an enclosed structure adjacent to the regular funnel casing.

Such is the demand for auto carriers in Asia than many of the larger ships have been assisgned to Asia routes, and slightly smaller ships such as Morning Christina will be seen on European and North Atlantic routes in additIon to their usual transPacific journies.

As an example of the world wide scope of these ships it is interesting to trace the Morning Christina's position over the past couple of months. It unloaded at Vancouver's Annacis Island October 20, 2023 then called in Nagoya and Toyohashi, Japan en route to the Suez Canal for November 29. It then proceeded to Sagunto (Valencia's auto port), Spain, December 4, Avonmouth (Royal Portbury Dock), UK December 9 and Zeebrugge December 11 to 15. It then followed the usual transatlantic path of Bremerhaven December 17-20 and Goteborg December 21-22.

And now for the other news:

Halifax boasts that it is an ice free port - and that is mostly true, however very thin ice does form from time to time in the shallow corners around Bedford Basin and has little if any effect on shipping. Where there is somewhat lower salinity, and very little wind and no ship traffic to disturb the water - and of course below freezing temperatures - ice does form. It was interesting to see today with a falling tide running in the Narrows that a very thin sheet of shorefast ice had broken free and was heading outbound. As the Navy tug Glenside made its way past the BIO and Pier 9C, there was the tinkling sound of ice cubes. There has been very little snow in Halifax, so the ice was as clear as mirror glass.

Also in port today, at PSA Halifax, Pier 42, was the CMA CGM Paranagua from Montreal on the joint CMA CGM /Maersk  transatlantic run. Ships on this service usually call in Halifax on the weekend outbound from Montreal for Bremerhaven, and run year round. This ship's schedule may have been disrupted by the holidays.

The Port of Montreal still observes the tradition of recognizing the first ship of the calendar year to arrive without stopping at an intermediate port. The event used to take place in the spring when the ice had broken out and it was safe to try for Montreal. The first arrival was often as late as May, but starting in the mid 1950s the first arrival came earlier and earlier until winter navigation became a reality on the St.Lawrence.  

The Helga Dan with its icebreaking bow and ice spotter's crows nest, was the pioneer of winter navigation on the St.Lawrence River. In 1964 it was the first ship ever to reach Montreal in January.It also called in Halifax from time to time with cargo from Sweden for the Volvo assembly plant.

Nowadays the first ship of the year usually arrives in Montreal on January first and the Port presents the master of that ship with a gold headed cane.  (This year it was the Helena G on January 2.)

Winter navigation certainly changed the way the Port of Halifax worked, as it had long been one of the "Winter Ports" (with Saint John, NB and Portland, Maine) that handled the Quebec City and Montreal ships for three to four months of the year. In the pre-container days this meant that a huge workforce of several hundred longshoremen was needed to load and unload ships. Passenger ships were also diverted to Halifax for the winter

Winter navigation on the St.Lawrence, coupled with the opening of the St.Lawrence Seaway was then followed by containerisation but none proved to be the death knell for Halifax. Interestingly Halifax and Montreal maintain a symbiotic relationship to this day, but are still rivals for transatlantic and other cargoes, but now year round. 

 

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Arrivals of Note (and Footnote)

 Among the arrivals in Halifax today, January 2, 2024, there were some notable ones.

The tanker Harbour Pioneer was noteworthy on a couple ofcounts. Firrst was that it arrived at Irving Oil's Woodside terminal from New York. By far the majority of ships that arrive at that dock are Irving Oil's own (albeit long term chartered) tankers, doing their rounds delivering product for local consumption from Irving's own refinery in Saint John, NB. Irving Oil also receives refined product at that dock from its own sources in Europe, shipped out of Amsterdam, but those shipments have been relatively rare lately.

Second point of interest is the ship's size. Instead of the usual MidRange ship of about 50,000 deadweight tonnes coming from Europe or the 37,500 dwt of its own tankers, the Harbour Pioneer is a mere 13,239 gt, 19,122 dwt. Built in 2010 by Yangfan in Zhoushan, China, it is owned by Vierte Nordtank of Hamburg. Ships of that company are well known Great Lakes callers but are seen here only once in a long while. I note the ship has enclosed bridge wings so it is likely Ice Class, as the prefix "Nord" in the company name implies.

I can also assume that the ship is carrying some small "package" of needed component such as winter fuel additive for local blending or some less commonly used product.

Another arrival has been the subject of some speculation (mine).

The Athina III is a 39,037 gt, 73,305 dwt Panamax bulk carrier, built in 2004 by Namura Shipbuilding Co Ltd at the Imari Shipyard + Works in Japan. It was delivered as the Ioannis Zafirakis and renamed Athina III in 2018 by the current owners Salvia Shipping, and the management of Eastern Mediterranean Maritime.

The ship arrived in Quebec City December 25 having departed Al Fujayrah, UAE anchorage November 19. It transited the Suez Canal November 28-29 and bunkered in Gibraltar December 7. After unloading in the Sillery section of the Port of Quebec (which has bulk cargo storage and distribution facilities) it departed December 29 and anchored off Halifax January 1.

When spotted from shore yesterday (see previous post) the ship appeared to be loaded, but that was a view from sea level, and was misleading. From closer up today, the ship appears to be in ballast and therefore will take a full load in Halifax, not just a top-up. The ship has a history of carrying soybeans, and that is likely what it will load here.

 As you will have noticed from today's two photos, the angle of view and focal length of the camera lens can distort the appearance of the ship, exagerating its proportions.

The autocarrier  Thermopylae made a return visit today. The ship made a quick turn around after it last visit on November 27, 2023. It sailed from here on November 28 and called at Baltimore December 1, Gothenburg December 15, Bremerhaven December 17-18, Zeebrugge December 20 and Southampton December 22-24. On this trip it is carrying only cars for Halifax, so went directly to Autoport, without dropping RoRo cargo at Pier 9C as it did last time.

The first ship of the HERO class (High Efficiency RoRo). it was delivered in 2015 by Hyundai Samho, Mokpo. The 75,283 gt, 23,786 dwt ship can carry 8,000 RT43 class cars and uses a 320 tonne SWL stern ramp.

With port operations now back to normal after the holidays, two container ships arrived from offshore where they had been idling. ONE Wren tied up at Pier 41 and MOL Experience at PSA Fairview Cove. I expect the Atlantic Sail, arriving later today, will have interchange cargo for the idle Nolhan Ava which has been "parked" at Pier 9C. Tropic Lisette at Pier 42 resumed cargo operations today too and is due to sail at the end of the working day.

 Footnote

It is a good time to thank everyone who has supported this blog during the past year with comments including the always welcome corrections, and to add Best Wishes for 2024.

I do not monotize this blog, so I receive no financial reward for readership totals. But I do welcome readers to sign up as followers. 

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Waiting

New Year's Day is a holiday, and there is usually no work in the port and January 1, 2024 was no exception, with only two commercial vessels in  the harbour, and both idle.

At Pier 42 the Tropical Lissette was patiently waiting for the end of the holiday period to resume work.

 At Pier 9C it was the Nolhan Ava laying over for the holidays, before returning to its usual weekly trips to St-Pierre et Miqueon and Argentia. (December 30 photo)

Meanwhile offshore two ships could be seen at the anchorages with Devil's Island partially blocking the view.

The larger ship is the ONE Wren a 14,026 TEU container ship. It is expected to move in to PSA Halifax Atlantic Gateway tomorrow.

Astern of it is the Panamax bulker Athina III also due tomorrow at Pier 28 to take a top-up load of grain or soyabeans. The ship loaded in Quebec City, but due to draft restrictions on the St.Lawrence River it could not take a full cargo. (Some sources have identified the ship as the crude oil tanker Athina, but this was an error on someone's part.)

Otherwise the port was very quiet with ships settled in for the winter. Among them is the museum ship Acadia at an unusual berth. Due to planned construction activity at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic on the Halifax side of the harbour, the ship was moved to the forner Coast Guard base in Dartmouth. Now the home base for COVE - the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship - It is also the base for several active research ships.

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