Freighter ship in Dublin Bay for several weeks now?

tinytobe

Just wondering, I have been seeing this freighter ship anchored in Dublin Bay for several weeks now. Is there any reason for this? Wouldn't this ship go to the harbour, freight being loaded off, then again loaded on, and then leave again?

thomil

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in commercial shipping or maritime operations, just an interested observer. However, having ships wait at anchor outside a port for days out weeks isn't exactly rare, though it tends to happen more with bigger ports like Rotterdam, Bremerhaven or Hamburg. The reasons for this can be many:

• A ship might be waiting for a berth to become available. This can be the case especially for specialised ships, such as gas or chemical tankers, where there might only be one or two berths available in any given port. If that berth is currently occupied, well, you have to wait your turn.
• The ship might be waiting for its cargo to be ready. This is often the case with ad-hoc charters, what used to be called tramp ships. If you have a contract to transport, let's say 2000 tons of lumber from Cork to Antwerp, but by the time you arrive at the entrance to Cork harbour, only 1500 tons are available, you'll just have to drop the anchor and wait.
• A ship is waiting to take on cargo from another ship. I've seen this here in Cork quite a few times, mostly with tankers. Basically, a large tanker heading to a refinery or oil/fuel depot will often offload part of its cargo to smaller feeder ships that can serve smaller ports. These smaller feeder tankers might wait for a week or two until the large tanker, the "mothership" if you will, arrives.
• The ship might be waiting for work. Once again, this mostly affects tramp freighters that operate one-off journeys, rather than being on a tightly scheduled "liner" type operation. This can take weeks or months, during which time these freighters will be riding at anchor to save the costs of berthing that can quickly add up if you have to stay in a spot for weeks or months. Unfortunately, this latter case can also lead to ships effectively being "abandoned" by their owners, with their crews left to fend for themselves. This is disturbingly common, especially with ships operating under some of the more "exotic" flags of convenience out there. What's worse, in many such cases, the actual owners are hiding behind a veritable matryoshka doll of shell companies, so they're often hard to find.

I'm sure there are other reasons, a ship might be quarantined or awaiting customs inspection, but those are just some of the reasons that I could think of of the top of my head. Hope it helps a little.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121329774#Comment_121329774

Thanks. This all makes sense.