Also arriving today was Maersk Mobiliser
Maersk Mobiliser
Leave a reply
Author Archives: Peter
Noble Regina Allen
the Noble Regina Allen returned to Halifax today, after sealing the wells of the Sable offshore Field. the rig tied up at woodside, where it will undergo a work period. in Febuary, it is scheduled to work for EnCana sealing the wells of the Deep Panuke project. When that work is complete in June, the rig is booked in Trinidad.
the rig arrived in Nov 2017, aboard Forte, and went to work later that month.
RRS James Cook
The Royal Research Ship James Cook tied up at Cove yesterday.. The Ship is operated by the UK’s National Oceanography Center, and was conducting the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program of Newfoundland for DFO – Science work that would have been conducted by the Hudson normally.
Cabrera loads wood Pellets
Sailing today was the bulk carrier Cabrera, bound for Studstrup Denmark. the Ship arrived last week after discharging gypsum in Saint John, and was loaded intermittently when weather was clear.
ex RCMP Murray now Ocean Seeker
She was suddenly retired in 2015, and sold earlier this year.
Cormorant is a Mess.
This week in the Herald I talk about the work done by the Coast Guard to HMCS Cormorant.
This should be an easy case for the CG to deal with, yet it appears they did a substandard job dealing with the ships 2015 sinking, and now needed to come back and fix what they did.Even this most recent action is problematic, as steps that probably should have been taken when the assessment being conducted discovered the issues. The assessment was completed in October, and Work began Dec 1.
Bellow are the CCGS Tweets on the work.
This Week in the Herald – Sleepy Conductors.
This week i wrote about the CN strike (which ended an hour after my deadline) and CP’s move into Saint John NB.
CP Buys Central Maine and Quebec Railway.
CP announced today that it purchased the Central Maine and Quebec Railway. What makes this buy so weird, is that the track once belonged to CP.
in 1994, CP sold off all its trackage east of Montreal. those assets were owned by Iron Road, which want bankrupt. the Montreal Maine and Atlantic was formed out of a portion of those assets, itself went bankrupt in 2014 after the Lac Megantic disaster.
Other assets in the area were sold to Irving, and operate as the NBSR. CP maintained rights over those lines until 1993.
since CP is re-acquiring the track, it will now have direct access to Saint John. this suggests they have business. Oil by Rail is certainly a possibility, however that has already been occurring form North Dakota. Alberta oil is to heavy to be processed by the saint john refinery, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to load crude tankers with Alberta oil on a second leg voyage. is that play big enough? good question.
what if MSC shipping were to pull out of Montreal – even Partially? MSC currently calls on Montreal and Saint John. Montreal is out of the way, and delays in recent years due to ice, and North Atlantic Right Whale speed reductions likely cause grief to the MSC Schedule. A suitable rail partner could get the containers inland just as fast, and save days of sailing.
Saint John terminal operator DP World is already listing connections to CP via the NBSR on its website, previously that connection was only possible via PanAm Railways, into New York state.
Harry DeWolf Trials
the Future HMCS Harry DeWolf is scheduled for builders trials in the basin Friday the 22nd. the ship is scheduled for trials outside the harbour Saturday the 23rd.
the dates were pushed back a day due to weather.
AOPS #2 is scheduled to move to pier 7 today at 4pm.
The New AIS Setup.
I tweeted the above photo of my new setup, and it seemed to be quite popular, so i thought i would post an explanation of the setup.
All vessels over 350grt are required to transmit an ais signal (automatic identification system) over VHF. I have a 8′ VHF antenna mounted on my house connected to an SR-161 AIS receiver. The AIS receiver converts the VHF signal to an NMEA sentence. The NMEA sentence is sent to an old laptop running ShipPlotter which takes the NMEA data, logs it, displays it on screen, and sends the update to marinetraffic.com. (I operate station 347)
the 3 monitor setup is accomplished by running 3 instances of ShipPlotter. The first (the basin display) is a remote session to the PC that is connected to the AIS Receiver. its set to send data to the machine running the 3 monitors, and runs 2 instances of ShipPlotter. those 2 instances listen for output from the first on their own ports. then it was just a matter of adding the proper charts, and choosing the desired zoom level.
A big benefit to the 3 displays is that i now have a clearer view of traffic, and the ships render to scale. for clarity sake, i set the charts to be 75% transparent in ShipPlotter, which preserves readability, but makes the screen less cluttered.
having logged data let me do things like make maps after the fact. I have posted 2 revisions of the traffic map, the full view, and some closeups, as well as a how to post covering how i built it.