Ports of Western Mexico 4B

No sandy beaches here, although I saw a few farther north closer to the US border and the maps point to some farther south.

My first thought was that this was a cross, like the Christ near Rosarito I saw, but it turned out to be an aid to navigation.

The entrance to Ensenada is a breakwater quite built up with tetrapods. 

I don’t know how long ago Kittiwake was sold, but she was built at the very familiar Washburn & Doughty shipyard in Maine.  Click on that link for a walk-through of the 2002 expedition/research vessel built for some folks in Narragansett Bay.

Wan Hai 322 was in port, as was

Ken Yo.

 

On one pier a clutch of tugboats and fishing boats awaits a call.

The two I got the best view of were J. Porres (ex-CMM Cordoba 1998)

and this one I was unable to identify. Boluda Towage Mexico is the leader in Mexican towing and a subsidiary of the second largest towing group worldwide. 

Fish, shipping, and grapes figure of the seal on the city.  

Ensenada has a vineyard culture and a craft beer scene,

the latter of which I sampled after hours and found quite satisfactory.  This drinking establishment had interesting decor on ceiling and walls made from . . . styrofoam!

Salud!  All photos and any errors, WVD.

 

New Hulls, Lines, and Liveries

Flux.  “Everything changes and nothing remains still; and you cannot step twice into the same stream.”  Heraclitus said that, or maybe he did not, but I’ve attributed it to him before.

Click here for the 1966 Charles Burton and the 2010 Charles Burton.  Above and below, that is the one from 2010, but the missing “V” in the nick in the green band suggests a livery change soon.

Over on the KVK, I first thought I was seeing one specialized barge, but

a closer look shows that CMT is getting not just new tugs but also new barges, CMT Y Not 5 and 17.  I hear tell there are more new ones also.

The ship is not new:  Polar Colombia dates from 2017.

But with Polar Colombia and Polar Peru both calling in the sixth boro in the same week,

I read that as a new line or at least new Hamburg-Sud names on their North-South trade?  Polar Colombia has already departed the sixth boro, called and reloaded in Costa Rica, and is heading back north!

Zhong Gu Shan Dong appears to be a new direction.  The ship dates from 2007 and it’s small . . . only 3400 teu, but it is registered in China.

Maybe a Chinese-reading person can translate both the vessel name and the characters on the hull?

But some of the containers are interesting, with Zhong Gu Logistics (upper left corner of the green containers) being something I’ve not noticed before.

Even more interesting to me, nerd of nerds, is what’s on the brightest orange containers . . ..

Alibaba.com!!  I know they are huge, but do they have their own shipping containers now?  Here’s more on Jack Ma‘s  Alibaba Group, including the name origin story, which I’ll quote below.

All photos recently, WVD, who’s always seeking novelty.

Here’s that story:  “One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said ‘Open Sesame.’ And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, ‘Do you know Alilbaba’? People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China… They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba — open sesame. Alibaba — 40 thieves. Alibaba is not a thief. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So…easy to spell, and global know. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name AliMama, in case someone wants to marry us…”  quoted from here.

Something Different 69

I had a different post prepared and queued up for today, but then I watched one of the most recent episodes of Sal Mercogliano’s  “What the Ship…” and saw a 37-minute interview Sal did with Madeleine Wolczko, a US merchant mariner currently stuck in a shipyard in Shanghai.  That remarkable interview led me to an even more remarkable 31-minute documentary that I’ve linked to the image below.  Click on the image and the video will play.

Take it from me, watching these two videos will be the most impression-making 68 minutes you spend today, maybe this whole week.  I’d suggest watching the interview first and the documentary second.  If you’ve never been aboard a container ship, and this is a US-flagged one, this will give you a sense of who works on a ship, what spaces on a ship look like, what crew do, and in this instance, what they can be subjected to.  Technical quality may not be Academy-award standard, but the the rawness, sincerity, and power make up for that.  I give it the winner of the Tugster Academy Award in the category of “best short documentary made while facing adversity,”  clap please but no slapping.

Sal’s interview ends with the mariner performing a moving rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” in the silent hold of a US container ship.  The hold is cavernous, dramatically lit, and silent because all work has ceased because of an extreme response to the most recent Covid outbreak in Shanghai.

If you choose, click the “thumbs up” on “Restricted to Ship, Ep. 1 – Shanghai Lockdown.” 

 

Thanks to Tony A 32

Tony A spends more time in the sixth boro than I do and sees stuff I don’t, for which I am grateful.  I’d noticed Zhen Hua 24 in Global on AIS, but I never saw the actual vessel;  Tony did on that rainy day a few days ago.   If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you’ll see the Zhen Hua fleet, which specializes in delivering cranes across oceans, has made previous trips to the sixth boro. 

With a half load of cranes, Zhen Hua 24 headed for sea, specifically to Côte d’Ivoire Terminal (CIT), Abidjan’s second container terminal.  So here’s my question, what did this Zhen Hua drop off in Bayonne?  More DSNY cranes maybe?

Meanwhile, over by Northeast Auto Terminal in Bayonne, is this a new set of straddle carriers, or are they just

parked in numerical order?

Meanwhile, Tony caught Acadia and

 

Liberian registry tug, since then bound for sea to an undisclosed location.  I’ve yet to see the Liberian registry painted on her stern. 

And while Tony was noticing all manner of unusual details around the sixth boro, check out Jane McAllister, now just plain Jane, soon-if-not-already bound for the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.

Since this post asks questions about a broad range of things, here’s another:  Is USGS the best organization in the sixth boro and associated waters to check for updates on water salinity in different locations?  Given the relationship between salinity and object buoyancy, I’d imagine it a good variable to know.

Many thanks to Tony A for sending along these dispatches from the sixth boro.

Wan Hai?

Something looked different about this small container ship as it approached.

Then I realized it was the color of the containers.  They were not the usual ones:  CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC, Zim, Evergreen, ONE . . . 

Just before New Year’s, I noticed a Wan Hai box on a truck on the NJ Turnpike.  Wan Hai?  Never heard of them I thought, so it’s taken me a while to get back to these photos, but Wan Hai is NOT a new company.  See the history here.  It’s just recently that they’ve expanded services to the USA, and what better time for a shipping company than now.

Arianna A is not a Wan Hai vessel, although some have called in the sixth boro.  I see a lot of traffic, just never caught one of the Wan Hai boats.

 

So it’s a new box color to look for!

All photos, January, WVD.

Entirely unrelated:  If you (or a friend of yours) have a million to plunk down on a 1931 motor yacht, SHELLFISH is the boat.

 

Retro Sixth Boro Ships 2012

The phrase “supply chain issues” appears to have eclipsed “pandemic” in my thoroughly unscientific and entirely anecdotal and mental survey. The PANYNJ website does provide some “facts and figures” you can mine and crunch to compare 2021 container movement here to that in 2012.  An easy conclusion is that the container ships are generally larger, so throughput in and out is going to be greater.  Can you guess how much greater?

Let’s look at a sample of container ships I saw in January 2012.  I’ve no idea what the largest container ship serving P of NYNJ was in 2012, but CMA CGM Jules Verne, a 2013 vessel, is 1300′ x 176′ and carries 16,000+ teu.

Evergreen back then was operating Ever Devote. The 1998 Panamax ship is still around.  Numbers are 964′ length x 105′ width and 4211 teu.  That means it fit through the original Panama Canal, just barely;  anything over 105′ wide does not.

2005 Cosco Tianjin is also still working.  She’s 915′ x 131′ and 5752 teu.

 

Cosco Osaka, 2008, 849′ x 105′ and 4578 teu.  She’s still working.

MOL Endurance, 2003, 964′ x 125′ and 4578 teu.  She’s been scrapped.

APL Chile, 2000, 656′ x 89′ and 4038 teu.  She’s also scrapped.

OOCL Norfolk, 2009, 852′ x 105′  and 4506 teu.

By the PANYNJ numbers, I see that in 2021, a total of teu lifts (loaded and empties) is around 9 million, not quite double the 2012 figure of about 5.5 million.  Bigger ships calling, like CMA CGM Jules Verne, slows things down obviously;  one of those carries almost the same number of containers as FOUR times APL Chile.

All 2012 photos here are credited to WVD, and any errors in calculations get blamed to the same guy.

Keep in mind that besides container traffic, the port moves a significant amount of other cargo, including dry bulk materials, petroleum, other wet bulk cargoes [like orange juice], vehicles, and passengers. If I’ve left anything out, I’m sure you’ll tell me.

Ocean Explorer

I could have called this post about this vessel out there on a hazy midday “people movers 15″, because this is a cruise ship, unique in many ways:  size, shape, and place of origin.  I could also have called it “newest hull in the sixth boro 11″ because it is, although there are three other candidates that arrived here for the first time this past weekend.  I could have called it “exotics 28″ since I assumed this was another wind farm-related bathymetric vessel or some other research vessel like OceanXplorer, which came here not quite a year ago. A lot of wind farm vessels vessels in the sixth boro have either ocean or explorer in their name. 

See the notations on the hull?  According to this summary here, it’s a Norwegian design,  ordered by a Florida company, built by a Chinese shipyard,  flagged Bahamian, and operated by a company owned by a Bostonian.    Got all that?

She came into the sixth boro yesterday, traveled up to Hyde Park anchorage, and in the wee hours arrived at the Manhattan passenger terminal from the north.

She’s the second of her class, which will be comprised of seven vessels, one of which will be named for Sylvia Earle.  She departed Haimen CN in late July, stopped in Manilla first to crew up, and then in Malta to get hotel crew and supplies, and then the UK to begin a cruise.  I’ve no idea which all stops she made, since according to this notice, the 2021 cruising season was Covid-cancelled.

She did transit the Cape Cod Canal, where she was examined stem, stern, masthead to waterline by a drone.

That Ulstein bow was seen on a vessel in the Hudson four years ago exactly here, and in Cape Town nine years ago here.

More on Ocean Explorer here.

With dimensions of 343′ x 60′, she carries twice as many passengers as Grande Caribe or Grand Mariner,  the Blount “small ships,”  162 guests with 77 cabins of which 15 are solo cabins.  Her 162 passengers represent less than 4% of the number of passengers on Symphony of the Seas.  Ocean Explorer has been referred to as a polar expedition cruise vessel, like Fram, because of the construction of its hull. 

All photos and any errors, WVD.

As of posting, she’s at the north side of Pier 88.  Did anyone get pics of her in Provincetown?

 

Whatzit 43 Redux

This overcast day contributed to photos that appear to gray-out all but the range of bronze, red, and orange.  But what is this cargo and why is the title here a “redux”?

Here’s a closeup and

an even closer up. 

I counted a total of 14 of these Kalmar straddle carriers aka straddlers on deck. The fact that these have cabins says they are not autonomous models.  I believe these are electric, not hybrid, or diesel models.  Since they’re going to Maher Terminals, these would be “fleet renewal” electric ones alluded to here.  Anyone know how many straddlers can be found at the various terminals in the sixth boro?

 

In November 2018 on a blindingly bright day, the same vessel came to the sixth boro of NYC with the same type of load.  See it here.  The only differences are that that time it came from Finland and this was from Gydnia, Poland and straddlers were a different model headed for a different terminal in Port Elizabeth.

 

All photos yesterday, WVD.

Whiler we’re on “reduxes,”  this is the 100th anniversary of Day-Peckinpaugh‘s first visit to New York;  here’s a redux post on that first trip . . .

 

 

Random ULCVs 11

With Eastern Dawn in the foreground, the massive scale of these box boats is apparent.

Foreshortening gives the illusion that MSC Lauren cannot possibly avoid a collision.

Although this may be her first arrival in the sixth boro, this 12400 teu vessel has sailed the seas for a decade already.

See the crewman near the port bow quarter?

Now you see him?

 

If I recall correctly, she arrived here from Jamaica;  from here she travels to Italy.

Again . . . Linda L. Miller and the 6000 hp tugs show scale.  MSC Lauren is one of 560 container vessels operated by MSC, the second largest shipping company in the world.  Know the largest?  The third largest?  Answers are here.

So here’s a merger of truckster! and ULCVs, a photo I took last week from a parking lot.  I know what was loaded into that 20′ MSC container.  I invite you to guess.  Answer will be posted tomorrow . . . .

All photos, WVD, who is always happy to collaborate.

 

Deep and Clear

You’ve likely walked in a muddy wilderness area and seen animal tracks and tried to identify then.  Or, you’ve had the same experience with tracks in the snow.  So what would leave these tracks on AIS?

The vessel has been working the Sound for a few weeks.   The two blue vessels here are Cross Sound ferries....

 

Here’s the answer:  Deep Helder, a 2014 vessel conducting sea bed mapping.  Helder is the Dutch word for clear, hence the post title.  In the distance, those are the hills of Connecticut.

Deep Helder is a 213′ by 52′ multipurpose offshore supply vessel, contracted to stay in US waters for a time yet.  More on MMT surveying here.

Note a cable supported from the port stern here.  I got these photos from the Cross Sound New London and never got closer than two nm from the vessel.

I hope to get closer up photos and learn more of who all’s on board . . .

All photos/info and any errors, WVD, who could have called this “exotic,” of course.