DAL Kalahari rounds off new SAECS fleet

Port congestion forces schedule change RAY SMUTS THE COMMUNICATION spoke for itself: Spare the Horses; so veteran master mariner Uwe Teichmann let his spanking new DAL Kalahari - last in line of six state-of-the-art SA Europe Container Service vessels – literally drift for five days on her maiden voyage to Cape Town in order to arrive a week later than scheduled. This is seemingly in response to a memorandum to SAECS from Derek Goetze, planning manager at Cape Town’s container terminal, in mid-March in which he advised the facility would be unable to handle the simultaneous arrival of the larger generation of container vessels prior to, and during the Easter weekend, without delays not only to the SAECS service but to other ships. The 4 500 TEU, 63 5000 dwt post panamax container vessel, wholly owned by Deutsche Afrika-Linien, a founder member of SAECS, arrived dead on time in the Mother City port on March 30. She was greeted by an eagerly anticipated grey sky and sudden downpour which compensated for the absence of the National Port Authority’s water display, traditionally accorded maiden voyage vessels by servicing tugs. The affable Teichmann - “it’s spelt like your rugby player Gary Teichmann” – told FTW he had received a message from SAECS in London on March 18, requesting he reduce speed in order to arrive in Cape Town on March 30. “I drifted for five days without the engine working, just beyond the Equator where there are absolutely free seas and fine weather, and after that we proceeded with a 50% engine load,” the Master Mariner, a 1975 alumnus of the University of Bremerhaven , told FTW. DAL Kalahari, unlike her ‘stable companions’, boasts luxury passenger accommodation for six people. She was christened at the Columbus Passenger Terminal, Bremerhaven, on March 9, and sailed from Rotterdam on March 13. The vessel, with 1 100 reefer plug points, is designed to maintain a service speed of 25 knots, powered by an eight-cylinder, 45 760kw, Korean-built, engine which helps reduce the Europe-South Africa round trip by one week. Deutsche Afrika-Linien, established 115 years ago, has been owned by the Von Rantzau family since 1942 and is the only original member of the SAECS consortium that has not changed ownership since the inception of the service.