Transport Canada issued the tweet above as part of safe boating week. Its very wrong.

A PCOC per the Canada Shipping Act regulations, is required to operate any pleasure craft. The link in the tweet indicates operators of any pleasure craft with a motor require a PCOC, even if the motor is not in use (ie a sailing vessel) or is a electric trolling motor. The PCOC is proof a person have the basic knowledge to operate a vessel.

So where does this tweet come from? well boats with motors greater then 10 horsepower are required to be licensed. this is synonymous with registering your car at the DMV. a boat license has nothing to do with your ability to operate a vessel, but is issued to the vessel itself.

this is why there are 9.9HP outboard motors – to avoid the licensing requirement.

Many people casually refer to the PCOC as a boat licence, much the same way you have a drivers licence. Transport Canada took the basic requirement for boat licensing, and applied it as the base requirement for a PCOC.

UPDATE: the tweet has been deleted and corrected to remove “of 10HP or more”

the yacht Ziggy tied up on the waterfront Saturday morning. it was taking on Fuel.

Ziggy is an Ocean Alexander 35R and was launched in 2021 from the shipyard in Taiwan. She is comes in at 199 Gt. and sleeps 10 guests in 5 cabins, and has a crew of 5 (in 3 Cabins)

registered in the US, the vessel sailed from Newport RI. she is reportedly owned by Michigan couple Bonnie and Harold Zeigler, who own the Ziegler Auto group, which own 78 car dealerships and other related businesses wit a combined 1.7 billion in sales.

yesterdays weekly call from Tropical shipping, was enjoyed with 16degree air temps. Tropic Lissette is one of two vessels serving the route.

PSA Halifax has purchased Ceres Halifax Inc from NYK. Ceres has been the terminal operator at Fairview cove since the terminal opened in 1982, with 2 twenty year leases on the terminal. As a result of the purchase, Fairview Cove will retain its name, and the south end terminal will now be known as the Atlantic Hub.

The planned acquisition was previously revealed in a December 2021 competition bureau filing.

Historically there was some competition for carriers between Ceres and Halterm. When Ceres began operating Fairview Cove in 1982, the company’s founder Chris Kritikos was successful in bringing ACL and Hapag-Lloyd to the new Ceres terminal by offering better rates then Halterm. Ceres first year in operation at the Port of Halifax saw the terminal handle 55% of the Ports total volume. To this day, almost 40 years later, both ACL and Hapag Lloyd both still call at Ceres Fairview Cove, though ACL did switch back to Halterm for a period. 

Ceres Terminals  was acquired by Japanese shipping company NYK in 2002. That year Ceres renewed it lease on the terminal for another 20 years, ending in 2022.

The release indicates that PSA will be rationalizing terminal use with a goal of reducing truck traffic – likely smaller ships and RO-RO will begin to call at Fairview cove – I expect to see Oceanex make the move.

Presumably with the sale of Shelburne ship repair set to close shortly, the CCGS Kolpit Hopson 1752 was towed to IEL in woodside, arriving this morning.

The Ship was formerly named CCGS Edward Cornwallis, and was renamed as part of an extensive life extension that saw the ship re-powered, and its buoy handling derrick replaced with a crane. The refit began at Shelburne Ship repair in January 2021, and the new name for the ship was announced last march.

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The CCGS Hudson is to be Decommissioned. The feds made the announcement at 1:30 today. The ship suffered a failure of the Starboard propulsion motor. Nov 5th, and has been tied up in St. John’s since.

Hudson was subject to extensive refits in 2020 and 2021, which Davie declined to bid on, citeing the condition of the ship in a public letter.

Hudson is powered by a diesel electric propulsion system. Power is provided by four V-16 Alco diesel engines, which drive 4 1500 kW, 600 volts DC generators, connected to two electric motors each driving a shaft.

UPDATE: Here is the formal Announcement:

Following 59 years of dedicated service, the Canadian Coast Guard’s oldest serving vessel, the CCGS Hudson is being decommissioned. In November 2021, a failure of the starboard propulsion motor placed the CCGS Hudson out of service. Due to the scale of the problem and the time and cost to repair it, combined with the costs associated with an upcoming period of regulatory compliance work, it has been determined that the ship is beyond economical repair and further investment would not allow it to return to reliable service. 

The CCGS Hudson is a key platform for Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s oceanographic science program. While there are no science missions planned for the CCGS Hudson over the winter months, the vessel’s permanent replacement, the yet to be named Offshore Oceanographic and Science Vessel, isn’t expected to be delivered until 2025. The Canadian Coast Guard is working closely with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to evaluate the near and long terms impacts on programming and developing a plan to mitigate these impacts. Discussions are focused on which parts of the science program can be completed by other Canadian Coast Guard vessels, by chartered vessels, or through the use of other technology.

The decommissioning of the CCGS Hudson marks the end of an era for the Canadian Coast Guard. In the coming months, plans for a celebration of the ship and the crews’ accomplishments over the past 59 years will be developed and Canadians will have the opportunity to share memories and experiences of their own interactions with the ship and all of its past crews.

DFO Release.

the Tug Atlantic Cedar was the first arrival of the year in port. It Arrived around 6:30pm new years day. Dallas Express was the first Container ship. it took to Anchor in the basin, arriving Jan 2.

Previous Years: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011
2021 was a bit of a slow year. I spent a Week on Sable Island (more)

Port News

The cruise season was canceled. Halifax Fire’s new Fire boat arrived, and Theodore Tugboat moved to Hamilton.

CMA-CGM Marco Polo set the Size record for largest containership to call, coming in at 16022teu. Threat of a Strike leg to the stockpiling of Road Salt on Pier 9

The Bluenose Turned 100, and Laser dinghy designer Bruce Kirby Died. CSS Acadia finally went to a shipyard for Hull work. The Bridge Commission released a report looking into options for a New Mackay bridge. The Seaport market moved to make way for PIER.

Incidents

Singelgracht was towed into port, Imedghassen and Giulia 1 had engine troubles, and took a rogue wave respectively. Hydra Mariner went agound. F/V Atlantic Destiny Caught fire and Sank. The Ever Given blocked the Suez, a float plane was forced to land short of YHZ in a lake. Zim Kingston Caught fire off victoria.

New Builds and Repairs

Mega blocks for Max Bernays were rolled out, and the ship launched. Margaret Brooke completed trials. The New Large naval tugs were named.

CG Lifeboats were transported to BC by Atlantic condor. CCGS Hudson had more work done on her, and CCGS Edward Cornwallis was renamed as part of her refit.

Siem Hanne was sold

Visiting Ships

Exercise Cutlass Fury 21 took place, with FS Aquitaine joining the RCN. OP Nannok saw USCGC Escanaba and USCGC Richard Synder Participating.

West light is reasonable walking distance to Main Station. At this point its primarily occupied by BIO scientists studying the islands seal population, and the house is Known as BIO House now.

the light still exists, though it was decommissioned in the early 2000’s

A Universal Carrier lies on the south beach at west light. this tracked vehicle was surplus from the war and was used to move boats and other equipment on the island.

remains of Quonset huts that were used to store equipment and supplies. these were made of steel and are rusting in the sand. some of the contents of the huts lay around the area, including this bucket from an excavator.

(below) collapsed supports for a tank farm. These and the quonset huts are located on the north beach behind West light.

A non directional beacon was installed to aid in aircraft navigation. It failed, and lies abandoned.

Next to West light is Aliant House. the island briefly had cell service, when Aliant installed cellular equipment in an attempt to service the nearby oil platforms. It didn’t work, and the equipment removed. The tower is still in use, providing trunked communications on the island.

This is the Third post covering days 21-30 of the 30 Day Map Challenge. The first 10 days were previously posted and the Middle 10 days were as well. As a reminder, these are the themes

Day 21 – Elevation
Lytton BC, in the Frasier valley. This was generated with CANVEC Transport data, BC Water course Data, and the terrain is from SRTM.

Day 22 – Boundaries
Atlantic Canada Lobster fishing areas. Each is defined in legislation, but there are no published shapefiles. Bathemetry is from Gebco.

Day 23 – Global Human Settlement Layer
GHSL is a data set of where people live. I treated it as urban light at night.

Day 24 – Historical
I made use of the CLIWOC dataset derived from ships logs to plot the main sea routes in use 1750-1850. These only show British ships, and you can see how the prevailing winds affected chosen routes, and the effects of the lack of a reliable way to determine longitude. the world data is from Natural Earth

Day 25 – Interactive
Day 1’s point map, but clickable and done in Leaflet.js. check it out at Atlanticmx.ca

Day 26 – Choropleth
Mapping 2016 census, dwellings per census block in Atlantic Canada. I used the Population and Dwelling table joined to the dissemination area shapefile.

Day 27 – Heatmap
this map hows the density of station responses from January – July 2020. there were 460 source points to generate this heat map.

Day 28 – The Earth is not Flat
Global shipping density displayed on a globe. You can see the Great circle route from the Mediterranean to the Panama Canal decently well. Ship Density Data is from the world bank, and the globe was done with a QGIS plugin

Day 29 – Null
For Null, i mapped Abandoned Mine openings in Pictou County. Holes are null, abandoned things are null, so abandoned holes are double Null. Of note, looking at the provinces data, there were 2 Tungsten mines in Lower Sackville, A gold mine in Fairview, and a Arsenic Mine in Waverly. Data Set from the Province of NS

Day 30 – MetaMapping day
Meta data is data about data, therefore a Meta Map is a map about maps. That is the purpose of this post. to organize the 30 days, and guide you through it.