(Wednesday, May 18th, 2016)
Monday and Tuesday we visited Bremerhaven, Germany.
We took a right turn off the North Sea just north of the English Channel and there we were! Well, maybe there was more to it than that. The North Sea was rough where we needed to pick up the pilot, so the pilot was delivered to us by helicopter! It happened so fast that I did not get to take pictures. The Captain said later that he was surprised as well. He had called to confirm that we needed a pilot, since folks on the bridge couldn’t see any boats that looked like pilot boats, and the pilot center said “12 minutes, be right there”, and in 12 minutes a helicopter was hovering over our bow, matching our speed. We didn’t even have to slow down for it. They lowered the pilot to the bow deck using a harness, and it was all over and the helicopter was headed away in about 2 minutes. Wow. Guess we can roll up that rope ladder from the side of the ship!
The seaway into Bremerhaven is wide and flat, with the channel being a narrower section, well-marked by buoys, snaking through. Often we could see sand bars close by, and many of the buoys, rather than floating, were mini-lighthouses of various shapes and sizes. The water turned from the usual dark blue and green to more brown, given the lack of depth. We had a lot of wind. There were many small farms of wind generators, including some right in port. They wouldn’t put those expensive things where wind was iffy, so I assume this place is consistently windy.
We had to make an extreme turn off the main channel to come into port, helped by tugs, and then we were facing a lock! Most of the docks are in Bremerhaven Harbor, and the water level there is higher than the channel to the North Sea, so we went through one lock to get to our berth. I have to say that one lock no longer impresses, having been through the Panama Canal. I guess I’ve become a “lock snob”, tee hee. The roadways on top of the lock doors were pretty cool, though.
In the harbor were some specialty ships that I think serve the oil rigs in the North Sea, and a few floating dry docks. Bremerhaven is a shipbuilding port.
Our heavy-lift general purpose ship was the rarity in port. The container ships go to a different part of the port, but I didn’t see many while we were there. But there were always four or five car carrier ships around, with their boxy look and extremely high sides. Looking at those ships, I wonder just how much paint is necessary to cover one side. Their names are in letters several stories high. There were parking lots all around us with new cars all in a row, along with small trucks and delivery vans. Many of the vehicles were wrapped in white, just the front and rear windows clear.
We had some ordinary cargo and some extraordinary cargo. The extraordinary cargo included two pieces of huge industrial machinery. One weighed 480 tons, the other 450 tons. Those were the heaviest lifts that I’ve seen on this trip. Both lifts were from narrow barges, and the pieces were moved to the center of the ship in a nearby hold. We used our two onboard cranes of 320 tons each, and kept the span to a minimum.
For these two lifts it took from about 6:30 in the morning to an hour or so after lunch. Setup, checking, getting everything tight and checking again, and then some very slow lifting, much slower than some other lifts I’ve watched. At this weight, if the cargo starts to swing, the effect on the crane can be large. Not good. Speed of lift is just not important, so inches at a time.
There was one incident that helped me realize how seriously they were taking these lifts. The first piece rested on some chock blocks that pinched the “feet” of the piece. On a lift like this you want the piece to be free to move side to side and back to front with the first small lift, so that you can judge the action when the lift starts in earnest. Those chock blocks were preventing a complete assessment of the initial movement. The Captain said that they needed to go. The folks in the barge said “nah, it won’t be a problem.” The Captain basically said “I am the Captain and I am responsible for this lift”. So one of our seamen hustled into our storage area, returned with a chain saw (I am not making this up – I am not that creative), lit it up, and removed the parts of the chock blocks that would prevent a full assessment. Just about 10 or 15 extra minutes, totally inconsequential to the whole lift. I learned two things: a) The Captain takes his responsibility seriously; b) We have a chainsaw on board!
On the pilot deck, watching the slow but interesting action, I had a good view of the parking lot where all the new cars were parked. I hope to annotate some photographs for a “weight and volume” comparison. I could see one section of small cars. Maybe a ton each, maybe even less, but good enough for estimates. There were about 100 cars in that section. So that’s 100 tons. One piece we lifted, especially when you include the lifting harness and cables, was about five times that. So I wonder that those big car carriers, with those big sides making them look so massive, might be carrying less actual weight than we carry. There’s a lot of air in cars and vans.