The French Research vessel l’Atalante Arrived at BIO on April 22nd, and spent today (April 26th) at anchor in the basin.
The ship is owned by a french research institute, and operated by the French navy’s oceanographic office. it may be here to complete annual science that would have been accomplished by the Hudson, and will be taken over by the new oceanographic research vessel under construction at Seaspan in Vancouver.
The ship features a manned submersible and several science labs.
SailGP just announced the first 6 race locations for 2026, and Halifax is back in June! From the Release:
In 2026, the Rolex SailGP Championship will set sail in Perth, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Bermuda, New York, Halifax, Portsmouth, Saint-Tropez and Dubai, followed by the winner-takes-all Grand Final in Abu Dhabi….
The full calendar – including remaining host cities and dates – will be confirmed in due course…
This 2025 Season, SailGP welcomed a record fleet of 12 national teams, including two new additions to the start line: the Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team and Red Bull Italy SailGP Team. The championship has confirmed plans to add two new expansion teams to its roster in 2026.
As far as the 2025 season goes, the Next race is Rio was cancelled after Australia suffered a wing failure in San Francisco. SailGP has identified a defect in the wings. New Zealand had also suffered a similar failure in a previous season. Both teams boats were built and sailed in the 2017 Americas Cup. The Next event will be in June in New York.
Enercon’s E-ship 1 made its first call to Halifax this week, delivering components for a windfarm currently under construction in Lunenburg county. The Components are being stored on Pier 9 untill they are needed then trucked to the site.
E-ship 1 is propelled by 4 Fletner rotors, which make use of the magnus effect to propel the ship. Essentially the spinning rotors create a low pressure area, which then pulls the ship forward.
E-ship 1 has called on sheet harbour in the past, but this is the ships first call in Halifax.
The Tuffs Cove power station is able to produce power using with natural gas or Bunker C Oil, and maintains a supply of Oil. the power plant is visited by a tanker usually around once a year to top up the tanks.
Larvik sailed from Houston, and arrived March 2. the ship was built in 2006 by Sumitomo Heavy Industries Marine & Engineering in Yokosuka Japan. its commercial operations are run out of Norway, but the ship is manged from Singapore.
Lake Shirasagi is the 3rd of 10 new ships to be built in China for Eastern Pacific Shipping. These vessels run on LNG (Liquefied natural gas) as its primary fuel. The ship is also able to connect to shore power where available, as denoted by the giant plug painted on her side.
Lake Shirasagi moved to autoport after discharging heavy equipment at pier 9.
The ships namesake is the lake in Japan created by the Ishitegawa Dam in 1973, and serves as the water reservoir for Matsuyama City.
On Feb 15, the container ship MSC Baltic III, Montreal for Cornerbrook, was sailing off the coast of Newfoundland when it lost power and drifted onto the shore. The 20 crew were rescued by an RCAF Cormorant out of Gander.
T&T marine salvage have been hired by MSC, and the coast guard is standing by, however work is being hampered by weather
View our Initial report:
And Latest update.
Crews are currently evaluating the situation. No pollution has been detected, however several containers have been damaged. and the hull is showing signs of stress.
Yesterday a flight from St John’s to Halifax suffered a landing gear collapse. There are reports that debris was found on the runway in Newfoundland.
At the beginning of last week I drove to Ontario, and on the way back was able to stop in Morrisburg to take a look at the grounded bulk carrier Tim S. Dool.
The Tim S. Dool, loaded grain in Thunder Bay, sailing November 17 for Quebec. Passing through Morrisburg, it left the channel and wedged the bow on Chrysler shoal November 23. Several attempts to pull the ship off failed, and crews began removing cargo late last week , and successfully unstuck the ship earlier today, and is currently at anchor.
The Tim S Dool was built in 1967, and is owned and operated by Algoma Central.
The Heavy lift ship White Marlin arrived at anchor today with what i suspect is a transformer platform for an offshore wind farm.
Boskalis has been transporting components for various US based windfarms, and seems to be doing crew changes and supply stops in Halifax.
White marlin was built in 2015, to the same design as the Blue Marlin and Black Marlin, which were built in 1999/2000.
USS Nantucket, LCS-27 arrived in Halifax for a port visit, while on her delivery trip from the builders in Wisconsin.
To date, only LCS-19, USS St. Louis has skipped Halifax, Due to her delivery trip occurring during the Pandemic. There remain 2 more Freedom class LCS’s to be delivered, USS Beloit and USS Cleveland (LCS-31)
Previous ships of the class to stop ave included:
USS Freedom – Nov 2008
USS Fort Worth – Aug 2012
USS Milwaukee – Dec 2015
USS Detroit – Nov 2016
USS Little Rock – April 2018
USS Billings – July 2019
USS Sioux City – Nov 2019 (missed this one)
USS Witchita – Nov 2019
USS Indianapolis – Nov 2019 (Missed this one too)
USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul – June 2022
USS Marinette – Stopped in Oct 2023. (missed it)
USS Cooperstown – November 2022.
Photo to follow.
