Ascension Island

The purpose of my Churchill Fellowship is to look at the methods used to unload on gainers from ships using barges at small isolated islands.

I could not believe my luck to arrive on Ascension island to find a vessel, Ocean Charger, from the USA discharging containers for the many US facilities on Ascension Island.

 

They were using 3 motorised flat barges to unload the containers. Each barge was capable of carrying either 2 x 20' containers or 1 x 40' container. The barge was driven by a huge outboard engine driving a propellor.

While I could not properly see the operations alongside the Ocean Charger due to the distance from shore, I alas able to closely observe the shoreside operations. The pierhead on Ascension Island is situated on the northern side of the Island, in the capital, Georgetown. The pierhead itself is no bigger than Cascade Jetty on Norfolk Island. The containers were unloaded with a large mobile crane, and placed directly onto waiting trucks for transport directly off the wharf to a compound at the USA base facility.

What amazes me was how easy the whole operation was. From arrival of the barge at the pierhead, tying up, unloading two containers, and reversing back out to sea was only taking them 7 minutes.

Next stop is St. Helena Island, 700 miles south-east of Ascension Island. To get there I have a 3 day journey by sea on the RMS St Helena - the last working Royal Mail Ship in the world.

 

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Falkland Islands Shipping

Despite having 2 ports where ships can berth, the Falkland Islands suffer from the tyranny of distance, and a unfriendly neighbor - Argentina.

There are two shipping services services servicing the Falkland Islands. The first service is from Britain using 2 large roll-on/roll-off vessels primarily to service the military facilities at Mt Pleasant providing a monthly service. Space is available on this service to the civilian population, however the military have first priority. These ships dock at Mare Harbour, some 35 miles from the capital, Stanley.

The other shipping service is named South American Atlantic Service (SAAS). The General Manager of SAAS, Eugene Hurley, was very kind to show me the SAAS facilities in Stanley. SAAS is 50/50 owned between the Falkland Islands Government & a private company, Consolidated Fisheries Ltd. SAAS charters the vessel, MV Scout with a capacity of 292 containers. The ship operates between Port Stanley & Montevideo in Uruguay, with an additional 4 voyages a year to Punta Arenas in Chile. SAAS have arrangements with other shipping lines to & from Montevideo to provide services to the UK, USA & other worldwide ports.

In Port Stanley, the Scout docks at the Falklands Interim Port and Storage System, known simply as FIPASS. FIPASS consists of 6 interconnected floating barges and was installed by the British Military shortly after the 1982 Falklands conflict. Since the construction of the military facilities at Mt Pleasant & Mare Harbour, FIPASS is now operated the Falkland Islands Goverment to service the civilian cargo ships, fishing industry, oil exploration vessels, as well as a ship repairs. The FIPASS facility is able to handle both 20' & 40' containers at the maximum weight of 30 tonnes together with the Forklifts to move the containers around and on & off the container trucks. However FIPASS is almost 30 years old & was built as a temporary, interim facility & the Falkland Islands Government have announced their intention to build a much larger port facility at Port William, which is the entrance to Port Stanley.

The biggest issue they have is Argentina. While the fighting war stopped 30 years ago, Argentina effectively operates a economic bar. They only allow one LAN Airlines flight a week though Argentinian airspace, they will not allow shipping lines to carry cargo both to Argentinian ports & the Falkland Islands. As a result SAAS has to charter it's own vessel, and operate it's fleet of unbranded containers. Despite these restrictions SAAS only charge US$3,000 for a 20' container from Montevideo to Port Stanley. This works at around US$120m3 to US$150m3 depending on how much cargo is packed in the container

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Rapa Nui Shipping

On Rapa Nui (Easter Island) I saw the first of the container barges that are used to unload containers. The barges are based at a small boat Harbour at Hanga Piko, on the northern coast of Rapa Nui on the edge of the Hanga Roa township.

The boat Harbour has a water depth of 4m, and a 100m long cargo wharf. They have built a small breakwater to protect it from the ocean swells. The approach to the Harbour has numerous volcanic rocks protruding out of the water.

The cargo barges are operated by SASIPA (Agricola y Servicios Isla de Pascua), in addition to operating the Islands electricity & water supplies.

They have 3 motorised barges, that are 14m long and a draft of 1.0m. They are powered by a inbuilt engine driving a propellor. Each barge is capable of carrying a 20' container with a maximum weight of 38 tonnes. Shoreside they have a Tadano 60 tonne mobile crane to lift the containers ashore from the barges.

They get 2 ships a month from Chile, and are able to move a cargo load of 20 containers from ship to shore in 3 hours.

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Tahiti

The first stop on my Churchill Fellowship travels to investigate the methods used to load & unload containers at small, isolated islands was a 30 Hour stopover in Tahiti.

I took the opportunity to visit the team at Transam Polynesie. Not only are they port agents for Pacific Direct Line, but they are also agents for Marfret - a large container ship operator that operates a Round the World service linking various French Territories with France. I could not believe my luck to find they had the Marfret Container ship in port on the one and only day I was in Papeete.

Stephen Nehemia from Transam Polynesie took me on a tour of the Papeete port, where I was able to see the cargo operations of the Marfret container ship. The Papeete port is on a small island on the edge of the reef that rings the island of Tahiti. The main wharf has room for 2 large container ships, together with numerous small wharves for the inter-island cargo ships.

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