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As recently as ten years ago, most container ships around the world were sized to enable them access to the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal locks are only so long and wide, the idea was to build a container ship that would fit. Ultimately an entire class of ship was designated Panamax Class (950\u2019 long, 106\u2019 wide). The weight of this class was about 50,000 Tons and Panamax became the standard for container ships worldwide.<\/p>\n
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A sea change occurred in containerized shipping during the first decade of the 21st century. The idea of economy of scale came into its own, reduce per unit costs by making bigger ships, much much bigger. And so the ULCV came to be and nothing has been the same in container shipping since.<\/p>\n
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The first<\/a> ULCV\u2019s that called at the Port of Oakland were about 1148\u2019 long X 138\u2019 wide, longer, wider and heavier than the Panamax Class. The significant challenge for the San Francisco Bar Pilots wasn\u2019t just adjusting to handling much bigger ships, it was doing so with little time. Through necessity, the class was introduced and put into service relatively quickly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There just weren\u2019t any ports in the United States, excepting the Port of Long Beach (the only port in the country experienced with +400,000 ton ships) that could handle ULCV\u2019s at the time. It was just the beginning of what is still an ongoing process and several ports throughout the United States have made major capital improvements to accommodate ULCVs. And they keep getting bigger with a new class, Ultra Ultra Large (UULCV) now in production. These +1,300\u2019 UULCV\u2019s are now beginning to call at ports like the Ports of Oakland and Long Beach. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difference between 950\u2019, 1150\u2019 and +1300\u2019 may not, on initial consideration, seem like much, a matter of only two\/three hundred feet. That\u2019s a football field, does the reader consider a football field long? That\u2019s exactly what we are talking about and length is not the primary difficulty, its weight. A 950\u2019 Panamax ship is about 50,000 Tons, a 1312\u2019 UULCV is 250,000 Tons. It would take five Panamax ships to match one UULCV in weight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In fact, the UULCV MSC Anna<\/em> just called on the west coast of the United States establishing an all-time record for a container ship. At 1312\u2019 X 191\u2019, it is the biggest ship to ever call at the Port of Oakland. To put it in perspective, the tallest building on the west coast of the USA is the Salesforce.com tower in downtown San Francisco. The MSC Anna<\/em> is a football field LONGER. Imagine that for a moment. The Empire State Building in NYC is 1250\u2019 tall from street level to the top of the roof line, MSC Anna<\/em> is once again, 62\u2019 longer excluding the 200\u2019 tall antenna. The weight of the Empire State Building clocks in at about 365,000 Tons, a 1320\u2019 loaded UULCV weighs in a close second at 250,000 Tons. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n To pilot a ship like MSC Anna<\/em> is equivalent to laying the Empire State Building on its side, then navigating through a 700\u2019-900\u2019 channel with several turns added in for fun. It\u2019s the stuff of bad dreams! I think most of us have had those crazy dreams where you find yourself driving something like a Boeing 747 thru rush hour downtown city traffic, all the while trying to figure out how to avoid taking out the sides of buildings while navigating rush hour! Well, real-life met dream life when professional ship pilots had to start driving ships like MSC Anna<\/em>. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Although the San Francisco Bar Pilots were ready and prepared for the MSC Anna<\/em>, it was not a normal or average job. Piloting ships like the Anna is the equivalent of extreme sports, expert professionals complete extremely difficult maneuvers that few think possible. The sheer length, width, height and weight is a game-changer, not that it can\u2019t be done but that it must be done with more thought, collaboration, care and training than the already very good piloting systems in place. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ship actually handled very well for its size\/weight, the designers deserve some credit, but this was a leap up from any other ship I have piloted. It circles back to weight, on ships this big, speed is more critical than ever. All aspects of piloting have to be done slower, from route driving to docking. They are so heavy that any developed momentum, even in a turn, can pose problems if not precisely controlling the evolution. The takeaway? Don\u2019t try this at home folks, leave it to the professionals. As to the professionals? Never be complacent, respect this class of ship, embrace new ideas and continue the successful collaboration with all stakeholders in this vital industry keeping the global supply chain functioning for a world that is in serious crisis. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Captain George Livingstone<\/strong>\u00a0is a San Francisco Bar Pilot, co-author of \u2018Tug Use Offshore\u2019, contributing author of \u2018IMPA On Pilotage<\/a>\u2019 and a regular contributor to gCaptain.<\/em>\u00a0Read more from Captain George Livingstone<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As recently as ten years ago, most container ships around the world were sized to enable them access to the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal locks are only so long and wide, the idea was to build a container ship that would fit. Ultimately an entire class of ship was designated Panamax Class (950\u2019 long, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5460,3118,4489,2940,5458,218,5457,5459,2939],"class_list":["post-8790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-anna","tag-arrives","tag-bay","tag-francisco","tag-megaship","tag-msc","tag-piloting","tag-recordsetting","tag-san"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/8791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}