(started Saturday, April 30th, 2016)
I am writing this in a hotel room in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean, listening to wonderful harp music (Allison Vardy, “Island Suites”). I admit to distraction. And later, in a hotel room in Morehead City, North Carolina. Not as much distraction – and that will allow me to finish, tee hee. Well, not quite. I am finishing this on board, as we approach Montoir, France.
I had been visiting parents and sisters for a week, nice. I am not going to write about that, other than to say that I gave a show-and-tell at a special needs school and workplace at which Janis works in Bushnell, Florida. It was quite fun for me, and I think interesting for them. I had some volunteers ready to finish the trip with me! I didn’t do as much work on this blog as I thought I was going to do.
Then I headed up the southeast US coast, seeking to be early to Morehead City, North Carolina, to await the Rickmers Antwerp’s arrival from Philadelphia. Can’t be late! Next port: Montoir, France.
Rumor has it there will be other passengers on board. (The rumor is true!)
I seem to avoid writing about American ports. It may be that I don’t feel the need – they are US cities, after all, and that’s not the gist of this voyage or these posts. I’m going to write about Houston, New Orleans, Port Manatee, and Morehead City, all in this post – we’ll see how that goes.
Both Houston and New Orleans have a long approach from the Gulf of Mexico. There is a clear distinction when we leave deeper water and reach the various shelves that ring the Gulf. The swells basically stop, as there is no water depth to support them. The voyage from New Orleans to Port Manatee was especially calm, as we were mostly in relatively shallow water.
The approach to Houston is the Houston Ship Channel, and the channel is lined with refineries and chemical plants. We arrived and left at night, with refinery lights omnipresent. They actually look impressive, especially when you think of how much our economy depends on them. A security guard I chatted with while waiting for a ride calls this part of Texas “The Carcinogenic Coast”.
In Houston, I used the internet at the Seamen’s center for most of a day, then went shopping another day, and went to an Astros game as well. At the dock there were thousands of cars parked, still covered in plastic, having been delivered from Asia and awaiting transport to other parts of the country. Also at the Houston dock there was a railway, so heavy loads could be directly loaded onto trains.
Getting to New Orleans is via the Mississippi River Delta, and it is quite scenic. It feels very remote, and reminded me of the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam. The difference is that the Mississippi River Delta is mostly scrub brush for quite a while, while the Mekong was full of small trees. You can see over the scrub brush, to other bodies of water. It was peaceful cruising up all the bends. You can see New Orleans in the distance for quite a while, and at times it seems that the ship is traveling away from the city, not towards it. There are a lot of bends!
We had less time in New Orleans but I did go down to Bourbon Street and listened to quite a bit of good live music at a couple of small bars. It’s a small street with a lot of history. It was lively and fun even on a Monday night. We discharged our loads to both the dock on one side, and barges on the other. The dock was close to downtown, just a little ways further up the Mississippi.
Getting to Port Manatee reminded me of getting to Panama City. It isn’t so much a long narrow approach as it is finding your way around a bay. Port Manatee is on the extreme southwest part of the huge Tampa Bay. The port itself, and the approach to it, is very scenic, with lush islands and lots of green in the distance. The port itself is small, and so it doesn’t seem to interfere much with the nature preserves nearby.
Since I was being picked up I didn’t spend much time in Port Manatee. I did get to walk from the ship to the Seamen’s Center there, so I took some rare (for me) photos of the ship from dockside. We discharged two yachts directly from the ship into the bay, and we also discharged some very large pieces of equipment from the top of our hatches – a few 2-crane lifts, fun to watch.
For Morehead City, I wasn’t on the ship when they approached it, and we left before dawn, early in the morning, so I cannot say what the approach or exit really looks like. The port itself is scenic, with a marina nearby, and also some barrier islands that are partially populated. There is a military presence at the port because it is near some bases, Camp Lejune being the one I noticed the most on the drive up from Florida.
At the dock at Morehead City we discharged a “house” that we carried from Shanghai. It is a control room for one of those massive wind generators. The ship next to us was discharging what looked like a set of huge tubes. They are the support parts for those generators. When I say “massive”, I should explain – the control room, which goes up on top, is more than two stories tall and weighs close to 100 tons. And that’s just the “little piece” that you see connected to the center of the blades way up high. Yet another education in sizes. We discovered that Amazon is putting 104 of these out in the Atlantic, near the Carolinas coast. Our transport and discharge of the control tower (another 2-crane lift, this one with one of our cranes and one of theirs) was also fun to watch. It took a while to coordinate and execute.
In “Raw Photos > Cooked” I put some captioned photos for all these visits.