2020 Shipping Movements

[Mr Miserable]

RCC ANTWERP is just 400 miles north of the Equator at her southernmost point in her voyage.
At midday Z her position was N6.9 W80.3 and she is about to swing north into the Gulf of Panama
She will drop anchor at the entrance to the canal later today (at the anchorage to the right) and I expect her to commence her canal transit in the small hours of tomorrow morning. (The first indications that she is about to move will be when a pilot boat delivers her canal pilot to her).
I will post some more information about the canal and how to watch the transit a little later today.
The weather continues to look fine both for her transit and her Caribbean crossing.

Just a final reminder that the RCC ANTWERP competition will close when the ship enters the Panama Canal - so don’t delay, enter now!

TRITON ACE continues to load at Pier 80. At the moment she is still due to depart in the small hours of tomorrow morning (about this time tomorrow) however this may be brought forward a few hours to allow GRAND AURORA to dock. (Nothing has been agreed yet - and there is some resistance from TRITON ACE to the concept) She will be heading for Zeebrugge. I have her pencilled in to arrive in Zeebrugge around 20 Nov.

GRAND AURORA has arrived in Benicia and the plan remains to move alongside Pier 80 as soon as possible. According to a source in Benicia she will depart Benicia around midnight and slowly head toward Pier 80. The hope is that TRITON ACE will depart a couple of hours earlier than planned to let her in. There may be a flaw in that plan! The big news yesterday was that I believe GRAND AURORA will be coming to Europe. I have pencilled her in to arrive in Zeebrugge around 24 Nov.

TOSCANA is still not showing on any of the ship tracking websites even with satellite access, so it is a ship issue. We may not locate her again until she approaches Singapore. This is a shame since there is some significant weather in her area. The storm I mentioned yesterday has indeed developed into a typhoon and it is now named Typhoon Goni. The good news is that the storm remains to the east of the Philippines at the moment and the even better news is that it is currently very slow moving giving TOSCANA ample opportunity to get clear to the south. Consequently I don’t think the ship will be affected by the typhoon. For the folk living in north of the Philippines (N. Luzon) however this could be a bad one….

TANNHAUSER is now confirmed to be the ship to be used for the 2nd shipment of MIC SR+’s for Europe. She will arrive alongside the dock at Shanghai on Monday to commence loading. The significant factor about this brand new ship is that she is a big one. I don’t know her exact capacity yet but I would imagine she has an RT figure of around 7700 (RT is based on the dimensions a 1966 Toyota Corona).

So tomorrow is going to be interesting with a canal transit and some argy bargy in the SF bay to watch!

 

[Mr Miserable]

The Panama Canal provides a shortcut for shipping travelling from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and vice-versa. Instead of having to route to the south of South America and then back up, a distance of about 5000 nm the canal offers a mere 50 mile transit. This comes at a big price, calculated by a complicated formula, designed to maximise revenue to the canal operators. The original canal opened in 1914 and was an immediate success. In the first year it handled about 1000 ships and by 2008 it was handling nearly 15000. These figures alone don’t tell the whole story because ships were getting bigger and bigger and one of the limits to the size of ships being built was the size of the locks in the Panama Canal. Ships that were built to fit (just) into the locks were described as Panamax ships. That is why so many cruise ships, container ships and car carriers are 32.3m wide and have a draft of under 12.6m.

The expansion of global trade and the increase in shipping meant that the canal was becoming a bottleneck with frequent delays and queues of ships waiting to transit. Fees for queue jumping became ever more expensive and ever more necessary to avoid delays. Alternatives to the canal were seriously being considered eg the NW passage and a number of alternative canal routes that avoided Panama completely. Panama relies on the income from the canal and could not afford for any of the alternatives plans to be viable and so a plan for the expansion to the existing canal system was commenced in 2007 and completed in 2016. This introduced two new sets of locks built parallel to the existing locks. Significantly, they allow ships up to 366m long, 49m wide and with a draft of up to 15m to transit the canal. The new locks are of a modern design which use less water and are regarded as safer and more reliable too.

So a Panamax ship like RCC ANTWERP can use the old locks - Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun locks to transit whereas bigger ships like GLOVIS SIGMA will use the new locks at Coccoli and Agua Clara.

The canal is big business and so is generally a pretty slick operation entirely dependent on how much you have paid. The Tesla ships are normally booked in several weeks in advance and are given a pretty high priority. Delays of more than 24 hours are rare and normally we can expect the ships to start their northbound transit in the small hours of the morning and be in the Caribbean around 8 hours later.

There are webcams at the locks so you can see a ship going through. The link to the webcams is here.

For RCC ANTWERP, I expect her to be at Miraflores around 7am UK time tomorrow and Pedro Miguel locks around 09:00 UK time. By the time she reaches Gatun locks it will be daylight. I expect her to be in the Caribbean around 3pm uk time.

Thanks to @Mister J for providing the above graphic.

 

[NewbieT]

If you’re really keen: Multimedia | Panama Canal Authority

 

[Morriscoombes]

Sorry if this has been posted before - the Toscana being loaded here
China-made Tesla cars head to Europe

 

[Spikeyspud]

Hey, my leasing company gave me my RN number today and so I rang Tesla and my end of October car has turned into a late November/early December. Disappointed but not at all surprised.

Great forum, and I'm addicted to the brilliant information on shipping etc.

 

[Mr Miserable]

Latest news from San Francisco Bay is that TRITON ACE will depart from Pier 80 at 04:00 local.
GRAND AURORA will depart Benicia at around 02:00 local and will slowly make her way to Pier 80.

(Add 7 hours for UK time)

 

[MGrove]

RCC Antwerp back within terrestrial AIS-range now!

 

[jorgenask]

If you’re really keen: Multimedia | Panama Canal Authority

Can't seem to get these live streams to work

 

[Mr Miserable]

Can't seem to get these live streams to work

My link in the post directly above to the same cameras is working.

 

[jorgenask]

ahh, it was chrome who didn't quite agree with it, worked in firefox

 

[Mr Miserable]

By now RCC ANTWERP should have already been through the Miraflores locks and so all is not well.
Alarm bells started going for me when she was placed in the anchorage to the left of the entrance - the long term parking.
Since she is anchored where she is and the fact that she has missed the morning northbound wave you may assume she wasn't booked and paid for - all fees have to be paid in advance.
Since the ship will be running to a tight schedule you can be sure that the ship's operators will be doing everything they can to get the issue sorted as soon as possible.
I have no idea how long this will take to sort out but you can be sure it will be expensive.

 

[Morriscoombes]

Maybe TRITON ACE will overtake

 

[jorgenask]

The GRAND AURORA has left the docks in Benicia

 

[Korgmatose]

Seems like the BAGRE is heading directly towards RCC ANTWERP now, might be a delay waiting on pilots. Although final destination of the BAGRE is unknown

EDIT: RCC Antwerp is now on the move again

 

[jorgenask]

Yes looks like it hopefully headed for the locks ? fingers crossed

 

[Mr Miserable]

Phew! Looking like we’re off

 

[jorgenask]

Question @Mr Miserable . Are the flow directions pretty strict ? and are there several flows in each direction every 24 hours ?

Again thanks alot for all your updates

 

[haukestk]

SA just told me that my Shanghai SR+ will be much faster in Germany than expected?? Maybe already in the end of november for take over - does that info fit to any ships for those shanghai model3 ?

 

[MGrove]

RCC Antwerp heading for the locks!

 

[Andre1972]

Hi together.
I ordered a Performance on 2nd October and i saw during the last days on Tesla Germany several cars in my config. Now they are sold and i still got no vin assigned. Does anyone know if there are Performances on the Antweerp, because there were on Tesla Hompepage several Performances to sell?
I am a little bit confused......LG Andre (Germany)