Fednav bulker Federal Mosel is sitting at anchor in the inner Harbour.
the ship sailed from Thunder Bay via Port Cartier PQ, and appears to be loaded with grain for export. Built in China in 2017, the ship is on long term charter to fednav. It is unclear why the ship has stopped in Halifax.
International Telecoms new Vessel IT Integrity arrived at pier 9 over the weekend. the cable ship is a Converted Offshore Supply Vessel, and its acquisition was announced in the beginning of April. the ship, compared to the rendering looks to be missing some equipment, so its likely going to spend some time alongside getting fitted out.
the offshore wind installation vessel Vole au Vent arrived this morning, and tied up at Irving oil for bunkers. the ship will then move to Woodside this afternoon to load the base pieces for installation.
The pieces arrived several weeks ago aboard the Bigroll Beaufort. the installation is taking place off the Coast of Virginia, and is staging out of Halifax to work around US cabotage laws. Vole au Vent will make several trips, to install the Bases, Towers and turbines.
UPDATE May 18:
the ship is now jacked up and in position. Im told the Installation will happen in three trips, first the bases, then the Towers, then finally the top assemblies.
UPDATE May 19:
Looks like the first pieces have been loaded.
The Photo doesnt do it Justice, but Atlantic Osprey is completely dwarfed by the new Maersk Suppliers, both of which are here as part of the Sable offshore decommissioning. Maersk Maker has been in Halifax for a while, and was joined by Maersk Mobiliser. Mobiliser has been to Halifax before, as one of its first jobs was the the tow of the fire damaged Yantain express.
nicely lit one night last week.
Having produced a couple of maps of ship traffic tracks in the harbour, I set out to do the same with the ADSB data i have been collecting. the result is Above, and is 5 days of Air traffic (arrivals in red, departures in green).
Shown are 325 flights. EHS, Cougar, and the coast Guard all conducted various training flights which are responsible for some of the weirder tracks visible. Lifeflights tracks to and from the hospitals are the tracks exiting the bottom center of the image.
You can see clear arrival tracks for Runway 23 and Runway 14 – runway 05 and runway 32 are less used.
I also pick up portions of international flights, flying great circle routes to Europe. those are shown in blue on this second map. – the range on these is much greater, as all these flights are happening above 20,000′
After the RCGS Resolute sunk a Venezuelan navy vessel, I was asked what i thought was going to happen next in in the One Ocean, RCGS Resolute saga…
well…
…Could it now be that the Venezuelan navy was merely wrong, but not not totally crazy in thinking the Resolute was going to launch a mercenary invasion?
Bellingcat is reporting that the Canadian Born, ex US Army Green Beret medic Jordan Goudreau, launched a Mercenary invasion into Venezuela by sea on May 3rd and 4th, with the idea of overthrowing the Madero government. 2 boats were intercepted, with 8 killed and 2 captured on May 3rd, and another 8 including 2 US Citizens captured on the 4th. Oh yah, Goudreau was tweeting about the raid as it was happening.
but if the live tweeting of the mercenary invasion wasent stupid enough, the AP reported May 1 that the original plan was for a force of 300, trained by Silvercorp in Columbia to attack. So much for Opsec.
Silvercorp became involved after they were hired to provide security at a Pro Opposition concert on the Colombian border, organized by Richard Branson. that got Goudreau introduced to some of Juan Guaido’s people. One of those people, introduced Goudreau to Cliver Alcala.
Alcala was a retired Major General in the Venuzualian army, and ringleader of a group of deserters, who were already training in camps in Columbia. Planning for the attack began in April 2019 at the Marriot in Bogata, which is where Goudreau met Alcala and pitched Silvercorp to train them, with an estimated cost of 1.5 million.
Trying to raise a small army of mercenaries is no small task, and no government was willing to bank roll them, Funding was tight, and the men in the camps were poorly equipped, poorly supplied and poorly fed. it all fell apart in March, when one of the men was arrested crossing the border, and Colombian police stopped a truck loaded with weapons. there is evidence the Madeuro Government was aware something was afoot as early as March 24th.
So along comes the RCGS Resolute. the ship, flagged in Portugal, a country that supports opposition leader Juan Guaido – acts a bit weirdly off the coast and happens to have an upper deck loaded with black rhibs, sufficient to land ~300 people. Meanwhile the Venezuelan navy is working on the assumption that there is a mercenary attack coming in the near future with the goal of toppling the government.
the failed plot, and the plans reveled by the may 1st AP piece certainly suggest that the Venezuelan navy had reason to be suspicious of the resolute, and the governments claims that they defended against a mercenary raid – actually now seam plausible, and not the crazy claims of a crazy dictator trying to hold on to power.
So who are the masterminds behind these plans?
Goudreau retired from the Military in 2016, and worked private security in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. he formed Silvercorp USA in 2018 with the idea of charging parents 10$ a month to put ex special forces into schools posing a teachers to collect intelligence about possible school shooters, and to neutralize them should there be a shooting. Goudreau has been photographed near Trump, and his firm has provided security for Trump rallies.
Alcala is currently awaiting trial in New York on charges that he was one of the architects of a Venezualian Narcoterrorist conspiracy that allegedly sent 250tons of cocaine to the US every year. He surendered to authorities in Colombia
From the roof of my house.
I caught a cyclone in operation on VDQ early this afternoon. its not clear if it flew, but it was running at power.
the Coast Guards newest medium icebreaker arrived for the first time in Halifax this week. the ship was acquired by the coast guard last year, and will be modified in when the work on the other two ships of the class are in service.
It tied up at the worst possible dock for photos, so hopefully a chance to get a better one will emerge in coming days.
