THE INFAMOUS ‘Cape Doctor’ South Easterly was at its vicious best last weekend, forcing the port of Cape Town to close down all operations for around 35 hours. This is the second port closure in a matter of weeks, coming at a particularly bad time as the deciduous fruit season is in full swing. What is more, containerships are arriving and departing fully-laden and disruptions like fog and wind lead to the inevitable bunching of vessels. “The wind was quite horrendous, forcing port control to suspend all arrivals and departures from 18:00 on Friday (March 14) until 05:30 Sunday morning (March 16),” says container terminal planning manager, Mike Powles. As Cape Town awoke to a serenely sunny day on Monday, six containerships lay at anchor, the only early arrival, Safmarine Nokwanda. The remainder, all of which were expected to be delayed some 41 hours on average, were MSC Messina, Safmarine Gonubie, London Tower, San Fernando and Maersk Gloucestershire. Although the container terminal is somewhat hamstrung by deepening operations to last four years – one berth is out of commission and that alongside limited in capacity – Quay 502 and Quay 700 are at least relieving some of the pressure. Cape Town container terminal is extremely busy right now. Powles estimates 13 000 containers are being loaded and discharged in a week, including some 2 000 reefer containers loaded with apples, pears and grapes. All six cranes were operational over this difficult period and Transnet Port Terminals Cape Town is clearly looking forward to eight new super post-panamax cranes, the first two due to arrive in knockdown format in July and expected to be operational by April, 2009.
