On the waterfront: Container fleet includes many first-time visitors

Over the past few weeks there has been an influx of container ships calling here for the first time, namely Buxlink, Hansa Meersburg, Maersks Izmir and Norwich, Marianne Schulte, Rena and Sydney.

This pattern is set to continue on until mid-October with 10 vessels due to call for the first time. And what an interesting mixture of names they will be bringing into the port.

Algarrobo, AS Carelia, Euro Max, Olympia and Welle are joining other vessels that have called here recently in the new Maersk/MISC Tanjung Pelepas hub service. These smaller ships have replaced the 4100 TEU ships that were withdrawn from that run at the end of last month.

And in retaining their owners' names these vessels provide a welcome change to the rather monotonous Maersk-prefixed names.

Bahia Negra and Irene's Rainbow will be coming our way on the Hamburg-Sud/Maersk VSA service to the east coast of North America.

Hansa Salzburg, due next Wednesday, is the second visitor on CMA CGM's Port Kelang, Northeast Asia, New Zealand Anzex service. Sister ship Hansa Meersburg inaugurated this service two weeks ago. Another sister, Hansa Coburg, is also listed to call, as is Christa Rickmers, which inaugurated the first northbound sailing from Port Kelang.

The three Leonhartdt and Blumberg-owned Hansa vessels are 18,327gt, 1740 TEU units registered in Liberia, and built by the Guangzhou Wendong shipyard. This week's visitor was delivered this year on February 8, while the other two have been in service since 2007.

Due at Dunedin later this week, to load logs is an interesting visitor named Vera 9. It will be the first Turkish-flag vessel to load logs here, and only the third, but the largest Turkish-owned one to visit this harbour.

The vessel has only been trading under this name since it was acquired by Vera Denizcilik A.S. of Istanbul in March, 2010. Prior to that the vessel had operated for Japanese interests as the Panama-flag Island Oasis.

A 26,989gt, 46,681dwt, 14-knot vessel it was built by the Mitsui yard at Tamano, which handed it over on April 28, 1999.

Earlier, in May, 1983, these builders handed over a 24,856gt, 42,069dwt vessel that received its fourth name, Muzeyyen Ana, when sold to Istanbul owners in 1996. The ship introduced the Turkish flag to the port when it berthed at Dunedin on November 28, 1999, to load scrap metal.

But the port did not have to wait too long before for the second Turkish vessel to arrive, again at Dunedin. This was the 4539gt, 1999 Turkish-built ro/ro vessel Aksoy Truva, chartered by Pacific Shipping.

The blue-hull vessel made eight visits under that name from September 20, to November 8, 2000. It was then transferred to the New Zealand flag and registered at Lyttelton as Spirit of Enterprise. As such, and with its red hull from early 2001, it continued calling until December 12, 2003, by which time it had clocked up 81 calls under that name.

 

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