The Zhen Hua 28

Friday, February 23, 2018

It was a dark and stormy night.  Hmm, well, no, actually it was daytime, but it was a cold, wet, dark winter day.  The weather was, shall we say, not the best.

Some of you have already heard about the four brand new skyscraper-like commercial container off-loading cranes that were shipped from China, across the Pacific Ocean, and that arrived at the Tacoma shipping docks in February this year.  When I heard that the ship, Zhen Hua 28, was on its way south down Puget Sound, I called a friend and we found a couple of places to go in order to watch the ship and the cranes go by.

We were looking forward to seeing something really unusual, but holy smokes it was cold this day.  We weren’t sure we wanted to be out in this weather!

It was already raining, but then it also started snowing.  I’m not sure how much of the “fog” in these photos was from real fog or from snow and rain.  It wasn’t much fun to be outdoors, but the idea of seeing the ship was great and seemed to warm us up.

First we drove to Dash Point Park and Fishing Pier and hung out on the beach there for a bit.  Even tho it was cold, the snow in the air and the misty trees and the calm water sure were pretty.

And, for this little person in the photo above, when your whole world includes only a foot or two around you, the whole world is awfully interesting.  🙂

Oops, a type of bird I don’t remember seeing before.  Ok, off to my bird book!  Hang on.

Ok, I’m back.  I think this is a Black-necked Grebe.  Yes?  I love its dark red eye.

So, how did we know where to go and when to go to see this ship?  My cell phone (photo above) has an AIS app on it.  AIS stands for “automatic identification system” and is used on commercial ships worldwide.  It can also be used on private, recreational craft as well.  Links to info about AIS are USCoastGuardNavCenter and Wikipedia article.

If a ship/boat has their AIS transponder turned on, then an AIS receiver on another ship or on land will pick up the signal and show where that ship is, its direction, its speed, where it came from, where it’s headed, the name of the ship, etc.  Commercial ships underway in US waters are required to have AIS on board and turned on.

There is a company or agency that receives those AIS signals and then, in turn, sends that information out to cell phones that have the app installed.  There are also apps for PC and Mac computers.

But which one of those dots on the phone was OUR ship?

We knew the name of the ship.  There were several large ships in Puget Sound that afternoon, so we clicked on the large green pointy icon for each one until we found the one with the right name.  In the image on my phone (above), the ship with the cranes is right off Normandy Park.  We had planted ourselves south of there, at Dash Point (#1 on the phone image).  We could watch the movement of the ship on the phone, but we wouldn’t truly see the ship from the fishing pier until the ship came around the point of land.

The small blue ships on the phone app were large tug boats … there were three of them at this point, all of which were out as escort to this particular ship.  Ordinarily, big ships don’t have any escort while transiting Puget Sound, but this ship was different.

The ship seemed to take FOREVER to get around that point of land, but eventually it did.

Photo (above) taken from the Dash Point fishing pier.  You can see the ship coming around that point of land in the far distance.  It’s about 5 miles away in the photo above.

As the ship rounded that point and then turned to head southwest, the snow closed in and the entire island of Vashon/Maury disappeared.  The Zhen Hua 28 seemed like a ghost ship.

As the ship got closer, the snow/rain held off for a bit.  The ship is about 3 miles away from us in the photo above.

As mentioned, the ship carried four of these unimaginably huge cranes.  I couldn’t fathom (no pun intended) why the ship didn’t simply roll over from the weight and height of those cranes.  This ship carries more than 15,300,000 (yes, million) US gallons of water ballast, in numerous separate water-tight compartments in the bilges, that offsets the top-heavy weight of the cranes.  One gallon of water equals 8.35 pounds.  That’s just the water ballast, not the weight of the ship itself nor the added weight of the cranes.

Some people near us on the fishing pier wondered aloud why the “arms” of the cranes weren’t straight up in the air, thinking that the weight would then be centered over the ship.  But in fact, that would add so much more weight even higher above the ship and add too much weight to the already top-heavy cranes.  Best to keep the weight down low (relatively), and evenly distributed side to side.

The snow lessened even more as the ship chugged past the fishing pier.  The ship is about two miles away in the photo above.  It’s hard to believe that the ship in the photo above is truly two miles away from where I was standing … judging distances across the water is extrememly difficult.  I had that AIS app on my phone and it told me exactly how far away that ship was.

 

The lousy weather kept lots of folks from taking their personal boats out for a look-see.  But there were a few boats out and about besides the ship and its escort tugs.  The boat above looked like a fishing boat.

The boats in this photo above were a Crowley tug (a large tug company in Puget Sound) on the left, following directly behind the ship … and a privately owned recreational boat on the right side of the photo that had two different diver flags flying while it was underway (flying any diver-down flag while underway is inappropriate at best and is illegal in some jurisdictions).

It was fascinating to watch the ship and try to figure out whatever we could see on board the ship, although we couldn’t see much detail.  Here’s a video that shows how slowly the ship was moving.  Notice another private, recreational boat out for a gander at the cranes.

As soon as the ship passed the fishing pier, my friend and I jumped in the truck (turning the heater on HIGH) and we scooted over to our second vantage point this day, which was in a parking lot up on a cliff (spot #2 on the phone image above) that overlooks Commencement Bay and the Tacoma shipyards.  Because of the snow, we couldn’t see anything across the bay.  Tacoma didn’t seem to exist.

But shortly after our arrival, the ship ghosted around the corner and came into view.  It was less than a mile away at this point.

 

 

Here’s a video below showing how even MORE slowly the ship was moving by now and showing the wind and the snow.  Brrrr!  There were quite a few other people besides the two of us up in that parking lot, all of us standing there in the miserable cold weather and the wind waiting for the ship to appear, and then all watching the ship and tugs, all taking photos while the snow swirled around us.  We all joked about what people in the Pacific Northwest do for fun on a miserably cold, snowy day.  We are not sun-seekers that’s for sure!

The ship anchored in Commencement Bay for a day or two, then was taken to its berth at the dock where the cranes would be unloaded and installed for use.

The day after the ship arrived in Commencement Bay, the weather turned beautiful … still cold but the days were sunny and clear with no wind.  So I kept going back every day and taking photos.  I’ll publish a post in the near future with photos of the ship and cranes in the next stages of off-loading and installation.

Four more cranes will be delivered in 2019.  Come watch!