Assists 9

As coronavirus spasms across the globe, affecting all aspects of public activity, container ship runs has been blanked.  But you would not guess so from the string of CMA CGM vessels that came in one sunny day last week.  La Traviata rounded the bend just before 1100.

The teu capacity of this 2006-built ship is said to be 8488 containers.

She was so light that the prop wash splashed froth to the surface.

Ten minutes later CMA CGM Thames appeared.

Thames carries 9200 containers, and was built in 2015.  I’ve never seen either Thames or La Traviata in the sixth boro, which does not mean they’ve not called here before.

 

A few hours later, a third CMA CGM vessel arrived . . . Amerigo Vespucci, one I had previously seen.

The 2010 Vespucci has capacity of 13,344 containers.  She one of the 1200′ vessels that now regularly call here.

That totals to 31,032 teu container capacity represented by a single fleet transiting inbound in less than a quarter of a day!  And to do some math here, that’s about 117 miles of containers stacked end to end, ie., the distance from the Staten Island St. George Terminal to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

For some perspective, a Korean company will begin operating the largest teu vessels to date . . . 24,000 teu.

So like I said, last week I did not sense that container ship sailings were slowing, which does not mean they are not.

All photos, WVD.

Unrelated:  A new word for a wasteful and polluting practice is coming from pandemic  . . . they’re called ghost flights . . .  Here‘s more on why airlines choose to fly these almost empty planes.