Broken record, or whar?.

The scene down at the dock lay down area was some what comical while at the same time typical yesterday morning.

Typical in the since that these things are common, break downs of equipment, icy slippery conditions, locals going about the business of unloading there own supplies from containers, the one lone wharfinger worker doing his best to do what he can.

The Aston was kind of slow unloading the containers due to equipment breakdowns, I’m told it has been an ongoing problem this last trip or so.

These series of photos show one of two prime movers {PM} used to move the reefers and containers. The PM had power to its drive axle but no steering.
The forklift had to maneuver the front of the PM in the direction it wanted to go, and then the driver of the PM gently hit the accelerator. Even with chains on rear wheels the PM invariably slid side ways bumping into containers and generally not cooperating with the driver, but doing no damage.
It took quite some time to maneuver the PM to the ramp of the Astron where it slid into the left rear of superstructure as shown. I gave up on the show after that, I presume the PM was eventually loaded on board and the second PM used to finish the loading.

Breakdowns are inevitable in any operation, but the problems with equipment failures with this service are legendary, you can see the age and condition of the equipment, that says a lot in itself.

The picture of the container shows freight loaded loose and fairly tight to the top, nothing wrong with that. Or is there?
The rational of using containers and a Ro-Ro vessel was to minimize the handling of freight at the same time minimize potential damage to freight.

Generally freight is loaded on palettes, palettes are loaded into containers. In this instance there could have been a couple of reasons to load without pallets. One would be to maximize the container space, another could be the customer wanted to save money. There is a charge of 20 to 40 bucks for each pallet, depending on the type of pallet.
Considering the extra labor involved in loading and unloading then loading and unloading who knows how many times it would be debatable which way is the most economical. The workers at this end don’t mind I would guess, more for them to do.

So this may seem like a broken record to some, but it is part of life on the coast of Labrador, and this blog is about one of those towns.

I have not been as zealous in tracking what has gone on with shipping this year as in past years. After a series of meetings with all the player last year there were promises made of improvements. So in the interest of fairness I gave it time for the improvements to materialize.

I took the occasional photos in the off chance some gentle person makes statements down the road that that may not be quite factual.

Update: This sun rise was unusual if only for the blue hue, sort of aqua. It was this intense for only a moment, click on picture to enlarge, but you new that.