8/2/04   Held over in St. Johns        <St. Johns Images>

Held over in St Johns by winds - probably get out early Tuesday morning. 

The upside is that a big container/RORO ship (the Cabot, around 500-600 feet -- weekly service to/from Montreal) came in today and docked directly across from us (< 100 yards).  I got to engage in my favorite mesmerizing activity: watching a ship unload/load.  I can literally watch for hours in a trance like state (and, yes, I know that this ability is not a generally favored personality trait).  The ship docked at 1:00 pm Sunday and left 12 hours later at 1:00 am Monday - on schedule.

The pilot did an amazing job backing the Cabot into her berth (no stern thrusters but she does have twin screws).  [Aside: In 1997, I took a nice picture of the Cabot underway headed up the St. Lawrence -- but she was 140 feet shorter then.  They subsequently hauled her out in Quebec, chopped her in two, and welded a new 140 foot plug in the middle.  Not all that uncommon a modification -- the magic of welding steel.  Even more challenging now, though, for the pilot backing her down around a corner into a narrow berth.]  At one point the giant stern (there is a huge loading/unloading ramp) was less than 200 feet away, looming above, headed our way.  She carved a huge hole in the water, but was always under perfect control.

Which brings up (literally) the downside.  The big ship draws twenty odd feet of water and the harbor where it turns and berths is less than 30 feet deep.  -- And -- I have confirmed that the sewer outlet is in fact up at the end of this little finger at the far end of the harbor where I am assigned to berth, and, next to which, the behemoth containership parks stern in.  When she backs in strongly with props all a-go, clawing her way into the berth, the net effect is a roiling, overflowing, vigorously churning cauldron of thick dark grey to black ooze, -- a bit like a good thick black bean soup at a rapidly rolling boil.  Except for the smell and the fear.  The fear is primal -- that the waves of crud will break against the side of the boat with sufficient force to splash some over (several drops would likely prove fatal.)  The smell -- ahh, the smell.  The smell alone could decimate a city block.  Oxygen bars would probably succeed here.  Dog and I beat a hasty retreat into our air-conditioned shelter.  Thankfully, no crud  splashes over, but, god, how incredibly gross.

There is a major civil works project underway building a sewage treatment plant (wow, what a concept), though the treated effluent will still get discharged inside the harbor.  Currently there is no treatment at all -- zilch, nada, yuck.

Containership is cool though.  Today we have a new one, the Sanderling (weekly service to Halifax), slightly larger, but also container/RORO, thankfully she berthed one pier further over.