Observant bunch, those folks in Manchester.
I got an email earlier in the week from Manchester resident Dave Pabst inquiring about a large — make that humongous — cargo ship anchored off Blake Island. Pabst, armed with binoculars and the magic of the Internet, already knew the ship was the Fortune Daisy, 738-foot bulk cargo ship based in Hong Kong.
You may have noticed the ship in photos from today’s
Manchester dock replacement story. It’s hard to miss it there
in the right of the photo.
Pabst wondered, “With charter rates in excess of $27,000 per day,
someone is spending/losing a lot of money keeping this relatively
new (built 2011), 738 foot long ship out of service.”
I poked into the ship’s story, using a handy site that Pabst already discovered called vesseltracker.com, a public site that shows the location of major ships around the world, with links to their specifications. The only thing I have to add to Pabst’s description is that the ship’s most recent port of call was Lianyungang, a major port in China.
I called Lt. Cmdr. Heather St. Pierre of the U.S. Coast Guard, who said the ship was more or less assigned anchorage in Yukon Harbor, as it arrive in the Seattle area earlier in the week, right after a weather pattern that caused large swells in South Puget Sound. St. Pierre did not know if the ship’s miscellaneous cargo was eventually bound for Seattle or Tacoma. She said having ships moored in protected pockets like Yukon Harbor, which is sheltered by Blake Island, is a common practice.
Not only is the surface water off Manchester relatively well protected from wind and waves, but the sea floor composition is such that it offers better “holding ground” or bite for anchors than in other areas, St. Pierre said.
St. Pierre had no other information on the ship, which according to vesseltracker.com was still there Saturday morning, but she said there’s no cause for alarm.
“There’s definitely nothing nefarious going on with this vessel,” St. Pierre said. “It’s just looking for a safe place to be.”
Well, aren’t we all?
