SAECSfs biggest makes her maiden CT call

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As the sponsor Frances Moodie, wife of Alistar Moodie, MD of fruit exporter Melsetter Trust, performed the customary champagne bottle shattering against the hull routine, two other new SAECS vessels were waiting in or outside the port.
Only one month old, the 294-metre long, 32-metre wide P&ONedlloyd Heemskerck is certainly the longest container ship ever to have visited Cape Town and at 59 000dwt possibly one of the largest of its kind to be seen here.
The vessel arrived on Sunday evening (March 6) and was due to to start discharging 1 000 containers and loading 1 793 from 06:00 the following day.
However, following her uneventful voyage from Korea where she was built, the vessel was delayed by power cuts and a crane break-down in Durban and by wind in Port Elizabeth.
gBecause of vessels being delayed for five or six days we have already lost one round, both south and northbound, starting in December,h said P&O Nedlloydfs new MD for South Africa, Bert Muys.
PONL Heemskerck, like her sister ship PONL Livingstone, which arrives on her maiden voyage in Cape Town next month, will have the highest container carrying capacity - 4 931 TEUs - (and 1 100 reefer plugs) in the new SAECS fleet.
gWith their 50% larger reefer carrying capacity, these new generation vessels will allow the expansion of the favourable reefer trade to European markets,h says Muys.
The SAECS fleet will be complete in April when Deutsche-Afrika Linien introduces its new Dal Kalahari, the vessel that bore the name now known simply as Kalahari.
œ When the P&O Nedlloyd Heemskerck finally sailed from Cape Town for Europe on Tuesday March 15) she had been delayed for a massive 177 hours - more than double the per vessel average of 80 hours for the first two months of this year.
Again, the dreaded south easter came into play over the weekend, halting total operations for ten hours, on top of which the terminalfs planned Cosmos computer upgrade took place between Saturday night and early Sunday morning. The industry had been given advance notice.
gOur waiting time has dropped considerably, down to around 32 hours on average, and had it not been for the wind we would have been down to 22. I expect we will be working ships on arrival from Wednesday morning,h said Sapofs planning manager Derek Goetze.