Makutu skips CT to avoid 300-hour delay

Whatever happened to Safmarine Makutu? One moment she was off Cape Town, the next she had disappeared from sight and from updated container terminal records – but all finally became clear at week’s end. She bypassed Cape Town rather than incur delays in excess of 300 hours. Terminal data for February 24 confirmed her arrival five days previously and a plan to berth her on March 3, by which time her total delay (including 38 hours of wind stoppage) would have been 305.48 hours. New container terminal executive Moshe Motlohi explained it was planned to work the non-CTOC vessel on a first come first serve basis at Berth 603, once preference had been accorded CTOC vessels. Provisional stack dates were planned for February 17-19 but the ship’s operators requested the stack be firmed later and stack dates provisionally were scheduled according to the 72-hour window period. “Due to wind delays and CTOC vessels arriving within their slot times, the stack was firmed for between February 22-24 for her to begin working on February 25 at 22h00, with a total of 393 import and 381 export containers to handle.” On February 23, the vessel’s operators informed TPT’s national planning and IT offices Safmarine Makutu would bypass Cape Town and her cargo was rolled over to the Maersk Dellys. Latest information from Cape Town Container Terminal is that the terminal was windbound for 9 hours and ten minutes between February 27/28, holding up work on Empress Haven (Berth 601) and Willi Rickmers (Quay 501). MSC Carla was most severely affected, 182 hours in all, of which 49.6 hours was weather-related.