Finally handed over to Maersk Line, the Moscow Maersk is the third ship to be built in the class out of 11. With a capacity of 20568TEU she is ranked as the 2nd largest container ship by capacity but gross tonnage she overtakes the OOCL Hong Kong by 4,000 odd tonnes.
Calling at verious Far Eastern port such as Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo in china, Busan in South Korea, Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia before transiting the Suez canal with a maximum draft of 15.9 metres. Once in Europe she called at Tangier-Med in Morocco to unload some of her cargo for the sourounding area. 1.9 metres lighter now at 14 metres, she made her way up the Atlantic Ocean and through the Bay of Biscay into the English Channel, into the North Sea then heading via the Sunk to the Port of Felixstowe. After Felixstowe she will call at Antwerp, Rotterdam and Algeciras before pasing through the Suez Canal to Singapore.
The Moscow Maersk was meant to board a pilot at the Sunk Pilot Station at 09:00UTC but delays with Moscow's pilot was going to be delayed as he would be on the outbound ship Maersk Shams that was behind with cargo operations. At 0900UTC the Maersk Shams was ready for departure. Off the berth and steaming down the harbour out towards the Sunk where a Harwich Haven pilot launch would land the pilot off the Shams and take him to his next job which was the Moscow Maersk.
Once onboard the pilot goes through the plan with the captian then radios Harwich VTS to confirm that they were inbound with a maximum draft of 14 metres from last port of Tangier- Med for Felixstowe Berth 9 and believed they were portside to. He also requests 2 tugs for berthing, the first at 7&8 and the second outside the harbour and push on the starboard quarter.
Making their way inbound via the deep water channel, Svitzer Stanford radios VTS to say they leaving the tug pontoon to be the first tug for the Moscow Maersk. Shortly after the Svitzer Sky leaves the pontoon aswell.
Stanford all fast, they stretch their line ready to work. Sky makes their approach to lay alongside on the starboard quarter. Closer to the harbour the pilot required both tug to help the Moscow Maersk around the 90deg Beach End turn into the harbour. Stanford goes out on the portside at full line load while the Sky pushes up on the starboard quarter at a 45deg angle to help steer her into the harbour.
Once inside the harbour the pilot gets both tugs to ease up and stanford when they were ready to go straight back 25% to slow her down for the starboard off the berth. heading down the harbour the speed needed to be reduced even more so the pilot got the stanford to increase to 75% as he came astern on the main engines.
Speed reduced to a crawl the pilot gets the Sky to push up on the quarter at 50% with the Stanford to move out on the port quarter and begin to pull the stern around with an easy weight then increase upto full as the swing progresses. Sky increases to full power aswell.
The pilot radios the berthing master on the berth to find out where the bridge position is situated. After finding where position was he says that the final tie up would be 6 and 2 each end with springs first then offshore lines. Crew onboard throw a heaving line to the mooring gang so athe springs could be made faast on the bollards. Slowly edging into position the Stanford moves around onto the starboard quarter in a check position with a slack line to wait for orders. While the Sky pushes up so the Moscow Maersk can be made fast alongside Berth 9.
ETD Wednesday 30th August 2017 at 10am Local time or 09:00UTC
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