Atlantic Progress for Nirint - Part 1 and Part 2

The much traveled Atlantic Progress arrives Friday morning for Nirint Shipping. To my knowledge it is the first time the ship has called in Halifax, but it has operated in this area under six different names.
It was built as Atlantic Pride by Jianjiang Shipyard in 2000, and the next year became Seaboard Rover before reverting to its original name in 2002. In 2005 it became Seaboard Chile II for another two years. In 2007 it took up a charter with Fednav as Federal Pride. Under that name it was a frequent sight on the St.Lawrence and into the Great Lakes carrying break bulk and bulk cargoes.
Then in 2010 it was sold by original owners Pontium Pro Nav Panama (managed by Athena Marine Co Ltd of Limassol) to Intership Navigation Co Ltd, also of Limassol under the management of Hartmann Project Lines of Germany.  From 2010 to 2013 it carried the name HAL Pride. It then adopted its current name.

I first saw the ship on the St.Lawrence River as Federal Pride.
 

As Federal Pride, downbound on the St.Lawrence with a full cargo in 2009.

The ship measures 12,993 grt, 17,541 dwt and has two 45 tonne cranes serving three holds. It has portable tween decks which can be stowed on deck when not in use, and can accommodate 984 TEUs, including 30 reefers. For Nirint, it is arriving from Cuba with bagged nickel sulfides and containers.

In 2008, upbound on the St.Lawrence in ballast with its portable tween decks stowed on deck just forward of the deckhouse.

Part 2

 At sunup this morning the ship was alongside with cranes rigged and ready as soon as Canadian Border Services completed their inspection. A string of gondola cars on the pier were ready to take some of the cargo.

The ship has a large deck load of  containers. The ship's designers had this kind of versatility in mind, and specified the cranked crane bases to clear the large hatch cover fit between the container stacks.

 

By early afternoon cargo work was well along and the crew was taking on stores using the small stores crane mounted on the stern. 

The ship will sail this evening direct to Rotterdam. (Some Nirint ships call in Matane, QC on the return leg.)

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Atlantic Star - in business

 
Whatever problems Atlantic Star had with its stern ramp yesterday were overcome and the ramp was down and in use today.

The high angle view also shows how secure containers are when nestled in the massive cell frames. The frames also have built in walkways for longshoreman to access the lashing points to tie the boxes down into position.

The ship has completed container operations, and is scheduled to sail this evening.  

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General Updates on Atlantic Star and HMCS Fredericton, etc.,

Atlantic Star will remain in port overnight January 6. Although it was still working containers late in the afternoon, the stern ramp was in the up position. This is most unusual since it is usually left down until the ship is ready to sail.
I have once learned that there is a mechanical problem with the ramp itself. I noted when the ship was inbound that an alarm was sounding from the stern of the ship in the area of the car deck. On tying up it was discovered that they could not lower the ramp. A new ship teething problem no doubt, but most inconvenient nevertheless since there is usually a lot of RoRo cargo for Halifax.

Atlantic Star gives a broadside view as it emerges from the Narrows into Bedford Basin.  The Seaview Point buoy is forward of the tug.

The ship's overnight stay resulted in fleetmate Atlantic Cartier going to anchor until morning, since the other berth at Fairveiw Cove was occupied by NYK Delphinus. Now we will see the old and new tied up together tomorrow.

HMCS Fredericton's send off from HMC Dockyard on Tuesday January 5 was ceremonial only. Although the ship went to sea it returned to port to transfer personnel and worked the dynamic sound range inside Meagher's Beach. It was in and out again several times during the day Wednesday and into the evening transferring personnel back and forth.
The ship never tied up at the HMC Dockyard, but instead transferred people and perhaps parts and pieces - by small boat.

HMCS Fredericton scoots out of harbour at dusk Wednesday - one of several arrivals and departures since its official sailing. Its gun barrel doesn't have the same jaunty angle it had on departures, so perhaps there were some firing exercises at sea too.

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Atlantic Star - ACL's G4 makes its debut

The first of five new fourth generation (G4) ships for Atlantic Container Line made its Halifax debut this morning. (The large letter G on the funnel casing stands for the Grimaldi Group, owners of ACL since 2007.)

Built by Hudong-Zhongua in Shanghai, the 100,530 grt Atlantic Star sailed into Halifax in broad daylight to tie up at Fairveiw Cove for the first time. Its predecessors of the G3 class have been the most dependable sights in Halifax harbour since the mid 1980s, and so ships of this class will eventually become commonplace, but the startling appearance of this first one will not soon be forgotten.

At 296m over all length, 37.6m beam and 11.5m maximum draft, it has been specially designed to serve the same ports as as the G3s, but with an impressive increase in capacity. 3817 TEU (versus 2908), 1307 cars (versus 1000) and 28,900 m2 of RoRo space (versus 18,500) are among a few of the statistics which single out these ships. The G3s were already the world's largest ConRos (ships with CONtainer and ROro capacity), but these represent a huge leap ahead. All this is done with a decrease in crew size from 21 to 16 and a reduction in fuel burn to 70 tonnes per day from 75 tonnes per day. One figure of note its that it has the economies of scale of a 6500 TEU container ship but with lower operating costs.

Containers are stowed on deck in huge fixed cell guides, which should ensure that ACL maintains its record of never having lost a container overboard. Seven fixed and four hoistable car decks with a maximum deck height of 7.4m and a 420 tonne capacity stern ramp will allow it to carry an even broader rage of wheeled, oversize and heavy cargoes, ranging form cars, trucks, buses and construction equipment to aircraft components, wind farm devices and all range of manufactured goods and machinery.

The four remaining G4s to be named Atlantic Sail, Atlantic Sea, Atlantic Sky and Atlantic Sun will be phased into service over the coming year, as the remaining G3s are phased. There will be an interesting event this evening as Atlantic Star sails and Atlantic Cartier arrives on its eastbound leg. The passing will occur after dark, preventing a photographic comparison.

ACLs sequence of port calls for these ships (its A Service) is:Hamburg, Goteborg, Antwerp, Liverpool, Halifax, New York, Baltimore, Norfolk, New York, Halifax,  Liverpool, Antwerp, Hamburg. ACL also operates in conjunction with other lines on four other transatlantic services, called B, C, F and J.

Since its founding in 1965 by five leading European shipping companies ACL has always carried a mix of containers and RoRo, and was one of the early container lines to call in Halifax and the first RoRo service. But before that they serviced the Volvo assembly plant in Halifax.

 Hother Isle was converted from a cargo shisp to a container ship in 1968-69 and serviced the Volvo assembly plant for ACL for a short time until the first generation of ACL ships began to call in Halifax in 1970.

 The G1 ACL ship Atlantic Saga unloads at pier 36 in 1970. A Mafi trailer at left and a yard tractor, some special steel pallets for Volvo, and a Triumph TR3 I believe, were typical RoRo cargos of the day.

 The first Atlantic Star initiated RoRo service to Halifax March 3, 1967 with 200 Volvo car "kits" for assembly in Halifax and 200 completed cars for the US market. It was lengthened in 1975 (with hull blisters or sponsons added for strength) and was finally broken up in 1987. 

Atlantic Song, another of the G1s after it was lengthened approaches Halterm.

 Atlantic Service, built as Atlantic Span, was the first ever ConRo ship when it was built in 1967. On July 24, 1987 it lost power while approaching Halifax and drifted aground off Sandwich Point (below York Redoubt). It was not severely damaged, but headed off the scrappers in November of that year.

The first Atlantic Star's stern ramp was an impressive sight in 1970, but fades in comparison the current ship's massive stern portal, which I doubt I will able to photograph.

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HMCS Fredericton sails for NATO

It was a bitterly cold afternoon in Halifax, with temperature at the -10C mark, with a very brisk breeze making it feel more like -20 something, as HMCS Fredericton got away from HMC Dockyard for a six month deployment with NATO.

  Fredericton wheels away from the Dockyard shortly after 1300 hrs AST.

This will be the ship's second posting to Operation Reassurance, a NATO response to the Russian occupation of Crimea, the first was in 2014. With NATO's SNMG2 it is expected to operate some of the time in the Black Sea.

The ship passed west of George's Island heading for sea.

Fredericton arrived in Halifax for the first time February 23, 1994 fresh from the builders in Saint John and was commissioned September 10, 1994. It entered the FELEX mid-life refit program at Halifax Shipyard October 6, 2011 and returned to the Dockyard January 2, 2013.

In its original pre-FELEX configuration, on a relatively balmy day in 1999.

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2000 in 2016

This post is number 2000 since Shipfax began as a blog in 2009.  I am as surprised as anyone that it has lasted as long as it has, and I hope it is and will continue to be a reliable source of information and of decent photos of the day to day activities in Halifax harbour. The companion blog Tugfax supplements that somewhat but doesn't confine itself to Halifax quite so much.


It seems to me, having reached a milestone, it would be a good time to make a necessary change.

As I have hinted before I must begin to wind down Shipfax a bit to allow time for some other activities. It will become more of a weekly journal that a news blog, although I will certainly make a point of dealing with important events such as the much anticipated arrival of Atlantic Container Line's new G4 ship Atlantic Star early next week.

As of June 26, 2016 I will have been observing Halifax shipping for fifty years. A lot has happened since 1966. I could never have imagined even the concept of digital photographs, blogs and smart phones when I unleashed my crude Kodak 620 on the Halifax waterfront. That event took place July 5 when I snapped the departing Russian factory trawler Ambramtsevo. It is a tad worrisome that I remember that event like it was yesterday, but sometimes I'm not sure I remember yesterday quite so well.

 Abramtsevo taken from the north end of pier 20, Saturday July 5, 1966.

 I had been taking photographs for about four years before that in Ontario and Quebec, but was never close enough to take pictures of moving ships. It took a little while to get used to that and to get the whole ship in the picture before it was too far away. (It took a little longer to keep my thumb off the lens and thanks to photo editing I can now straighten out all my horizons.)

For the fact  hungry, Abramtsevo K-7066 was built in 1965 by Volkswerft VEB, Stralsund, East Germany. It measured 2435 grt, one of the 90 ship strong Tropik class of factory trawlers of the Soviet Union. It was finally scrapped March 1, 1984 in Villanueva y Geltru (Vilanova i la Geltru in Castillian) in Spain.
Ambramtsevo is an artists colony founded near Moscow in the 1860s that promoted the purification of Russian art from western influences - it still exists today as a sort of park/shrine.
Abramtsevo the trawler was based in the Baltic port of Kaliningrad (former East Prussian Koenigsberg). It became part of the USSR following World War II, was renamed and its largely German population forcefully expelled. It was the westernmost part of the USSR and a major naval base.
Now surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, it is considered a Russian exclave, land access is only through NATO and EU countries, but it is still of strategic importance to Russia.

The ready availability of shipping information and data (such as all of the above) to anyone with internet access is another factor in my decision to cut back on this blog a bit. If you are curious, all this info is yours in an instant.

So thank you to all those who tune in daily to see what is going on. You may not see as much from now on, but you can always elect the Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) at the bottom of the page if you get bored with looking for news and not finding any. You will instead receive an annoying e-mail anytime I decide to post.

Thank you also for the many positive feed backs received over the past six years. I have enjoyed it at least as much as you have.

But stay tuned, it isn't over until it's over.

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FIRST WORKING DAY OF 2016

After the New Year's Day holiday, activity ramped up again in the port as ships were arriving at all the main centres of operation.

The first ship of the year for Cerescorp's Fairview Cove container terminal is the 5041 TEU Allise P for the G6 Alliance. It arrived just as the sun was coming up and berthed at the east end of the pier.

Built in 2007 by Hyundai, Ulsan, it is a 53,481 grt, 53,900 dwt ship and worked under charter to Maersk Lines as Maersk Dubrovnik until 2014. It then reverted to owners Stefan Patjens Reederei GmbH. It has been calling in Halifax for almost a year, with its first call on February 17, 2015.

The second arrival a few hours later was a new ship to Halifax. Rio Blackwater is also on G6 service and is also German owned, by Ahrenkiel Steamships Gmbh+Co. It was built in 2000, also by Hyundai, Ulsan and is a 5551 TEU ship of of 65,059 grt, 68,121 dwt. It started life as CSCL Shanghai and became MSC Shenzhen in 2008, Rio Blackwarter in 2010 then Buenos Aires Express later in 2001 . It became Rio Blackwater again in 2015. It has also worked for OOCL and only two weeks ago was listed on Maersk schedules in the Suez Canal, so it is really a jack of all trades.

The ship has a somewhat unusual looking superstructure, reminiscent of a tanker with long bridge wings,  whereas most container ships have a wider superstructure.Newer ships have compressed the length of their superstructures to increase carrying capacity.

Autoport's first arrival of the year is Procyon Leader or NYK Line. The 52,581 grt ship built in 2000 by Tsuneishi, Numakuma is one of more than 120 such ships in the NYK stable. NYK does not publish a fleet list with ship's capacities, but this one would certainly exceed 5,000 autos.

Halterm was the busiest spot hosting three ships. Zim Savannah and Maersk Penang arrived before sunup, and CMA CGM Bianca waited offshore until it was time for Maersk Penang to sail. It was not terribly prompt in doing so, and after boarding its pilot Bianca inched its way. When Penang finally got off the berth it took the western channel outbound to give the big ship room in the main channel.

Maersk Penang begins its swing into the western channel (passing a lobster boat) as CMA CGM Bianca is finally able to head inbound.

CMA CGM Bianca dates from 2011 when it was delivered by Shanghai Jiangnan Changxing Heavy Industry Co Ltd. It has a capacity of 8530 TEU (including 700 reefers) with a gross tonnage of 90,500 and deadweight tonnage of 101,433. As such it is typical of the size of ships on the Columbus loop. The ship is owned by Danaos Shipping Co Ltd of Piraeus and flies the Maltese flag on its charter to CMA CGM.

Due to its later than planned arrival, the ship will be working well into the night to discharge its cargo, since the newer and larger Halterm cranes are occupied with Zim Savannah at pier 41.

The truly mammoth size of these ships- and still very far from the world's largest - can really be appreciated in a wide angle view, such as this one taken from my smart phone.

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