The Marshall Island flagged container ship ‘San Fernando’, owned by SFL Corporation Ltd. and chartered by Maersk- (AP Moller Group), Denmark, and managed and operated by Bernhard Schulte Ship Management, Singapore, (BSM), will call at the Vizhinjam port to offload 1,930 containers on Thursday. The ship will be boarded by the Adani Port pilots around 7.45 a.m. and berth at around 9.15 a.m.
According to Captain Hari Gopalan Nair, senior LPSQ superintendent of BSM, a resident of Thiruvananthapuram who has responsibility as the safety manager of the ship, the ship will be navigated through the buoyed channel to enter the breakwater and will be turned around before the tugs will push the ship to the berth and then will use the ships mooring ropes to make fast the ship to the wharf.
The ship will be navigated in between the channel buoys once the main pilot and second pilot board the ship at the start of the passage leading to the berth. The three tugs employed for bringing the ship will push forward and pull aft, or vice versa, to turn the ship to get the bow facing out and then align the ship with the berth before the tugs push the ship to berth. The ship will also use its power by using the main engine and bow thruster. It is difficult to turn such a large ship using only tugs, said Mr. Nair.
The ship will proceed under its own power until a few metres off the berth, with the tugs made fast with towing ropes from the ship, with an option for the third tug to assist in the middle of the ship and a fourth tug standing by. Then the ship will be turned around to have the bow facing to the sea. The tugs will then push the ship to berth using the ship’s power as well. The ship has a powerful bow thruster, which moves the bow (forward end of the ship) to one side assisted by the power of the main engine, he added. The ship is planned to offload 1,930 containers which will take 2,537 landings and 607 will be loaded back.
