We share the highway with trucks and nod our understanding, although imperfect, of their methods. Trains, familiar captives of the rails, have secrets, but promise more romance than mystery. Ships, though, are barely more than splashes of rust-streaked colour in harbour scenes. Their departures are too ponderous for passersby to notice and their highways are beyond our horizons.
My curiosity about this mystery mode led me, one soggy Friday last fall, to the Bickerdike Terminal in Old Montreal, knapsack on my back and laptop swinging from my shoulder. Captain Sidney Hynes, executive chairman and co-owner of Oceanex, had granted my request to travel on the Oceanex Avalon, a 1,004 TEU cellular ship (a container ship with load-on, load-off capability) to St. John's, Nfld., and return on the 185-metre load-on, load-off, roll-on roll-off container ship Cabot.
It is a non-stop two-and-a-half-day trip each way, 2,058-nautical miles in all (one NM equals 1.86 kilometres). Seems arduous? Captain Hynes says, "I am always surprised with the apparent lack of understanding -the belief that ships are very slow. It is simply not correct. You will be in Toronto Friday morning and in St. John's Monday morning. The road from Toronto, plus Marine Atlantic to Port aux Basque, then to St. John's? They simply can't match it."
Loading is well underway by the time I arrive at 1030h. Averaging 21.5 tonnes apiece today, the containers are placed in the ship so that no part of its structure is overstressed and the trim remains even.
Using software that slices the Oceanex Avalon like a loaf of bread from bow to stern to display every container cell, terminal manager Alain Brosseau makes the first approximation of where they should be loaded.
I bounce up the gangway at 1130h. A ship's hand muscles my gear to my private quarters just below the wheelhouse, or bridge. I am led to the officer's mess for a lunch of rice soup, vol au vent aux crevettes and feuilleté aux framboises. Captain Hynes was right: the crew eats very well.
Inside the deck-level entry to the six-story superstructure, first mate François Nadeau makes the final loading decisions. "Software continually recalculates the centre of gravity in real-time as the ship is loaded," he explains.
Nadeau develops a ballast plan, based on the distribution of the cargo's weight for each trip. He pumps water and fuel between tanks to fine tune the centre of gravity so the ship will roll easily, but not too easily, and have good final stability.
From the wheelhouse 25 metres above the water, I watch a steady stream of shunt trucks pull up. A stevedore perched in a towering blue Empire crane latches onto a container. I check my watch: he can hook on, move a container into the hold and be swinging away for another in one minute flat if he chooses.
Then the forward crane operator starts unloading containers. Some containers carrying dangerous goods are shuffled to space them further apart, and loading resumes.
As departure time nears, Captain Richard Belley reads the Canadian Forces Halifax weather forecasts: there is a gale warning for Les Escoumins, including Pointe-des-Monts to Anticosti. He explains that he will avoid northwesterly winds by sailing closer to the south shore of Anticosti Island, just off the mouth of the St. Lawrence River; in August, the Oceanex Avalon sailed north of Anticosti to protect itself from hurricane winds and maintain its schedule.
The stevedores did their job well today: 292 containers and 6,200 tonnes heavier, Captain Belley gives the order to start the 14,900-horsepower engine. The gangway is stowed and he backs up the Oceanex Avalon. It is 1624h.
After clearing the wharf, Captain Belley pirouettes the 149-metre long ship through 180 degrees off the starboard bow of the cruise ship Crystal Symphony. Under the watchful eye of a river pilot, he eases forward under the Jacques Cartier Bridge. We slide past a Montreal skyline underlined by wharves, foreign vessels and cranes perched like giant praying mantises. A train carrying containers labeled Zim, Capitol, Caru and Hanjin follows the water's edge.
Now that we are underway, two men will spend four hours installing container tie down rods. On the return leg, they will begin removing them in Les Escoumins.
I join Captain Belley and chief engineer Steve Cotton in the officer's mess for a supper of fajitas au poulet and more feuelleté aux framboises. Following an ancient tradition, I suspect, officers receive attentive service from a steward and eat off of white tablecloths. In the other mess, everyone else enjoys the same good food, cafeteria style. The messes are well-stocked with fruit, cold cuts, desserts, cereal and hot drinks for off-peak feeds.
Highly-trained river pilots accompany all ships between Montreal and Les Escoumins, a north shore region roughly 100 kilometres east of Rivière du Loup. Our first pilot, master of the river from Montreal to Trois-Rivières, decides every course change.
At 2200h we reach Trois-Rivières and slow to 5.1 knots (NM/h). A motor launch with "PILOT" printed on the pilothouse kisses our starboard flank. We trade our pilot on the fly for one licensed for Trois-Rivières to Quebec City.
Captain Belley is in constant motion between the wheelhouse and his quarters. Another officer pencils our progress on a nautical chart. The third officer keeps an ear tuned to the radios and his eyes ceaselessly scan the electronic gear and the river.
At night, radar and other screens are the sole sources of light in the blacked-out wheelhouse. I study them often to see our speed and bearing, the wind, shorelines, river depth and other ships' business. At 2223h the passenger ship Masdam, lit up and hustling for Montreal, flies by. It seems very close. Fifteen minutes later a baffling shape resolves into the 40-metre tug Radium Yellowknife, nosing a covered barge up-river.
I retreat to my room with the view over the containers for some sleep.
A tap on my door at 0130h wakes me. I climb to the wheelhouse in time to see, pasted to the sky, the Pierre Laporte bridge, named after the slain cabinet minister, and the grand old Quebec Bridge, finally completed in 1917 after two tumbles into the drink. Quebec City comes into glittering view off starboard -an evolving scene mariners have enjoyed for four centuries.
Our pilot jumps ship. We do not need a third: Captain Belley is licenced for Quebec City to Les Escoumins. I crawl back into bed.
I return to the wheelhouse at 0700h in time to see an automated lighthouse and abandoned buildings on a little island off the mouth of the Saguenay River. Seals play and six ivory-coloured Beluga whales roll through the water.
I pass the morning below deck with Cotton. Oceanex Avalon was built in 2005 and the eight-cylinder MAN B&W diesel engine, a brass-coloured work of mechanical art taller than my head and over 20 feet long, is spotless. So is everything else in the white-painted engine room, thanks to the constant efforts of oiler Michel Dufour with his rags -the better to tell if piping or equipment has sprung leaks caused by the engine's relentless rumbling. (Fact: we will have burned more than 85,000 litres of IFO bunker 380 by the time we hit St. John's).
Cotton and the four men working under him have plenty of en route maintenance chores, but engine work, from checking valve clearances to pulling barrel-size pistons, is done in port. Cotton takes my picture standing beside a chin-high connecting rod. The ship carries a large stock of parts, including thousands of electronics components. "We have all the parts we need. We can't wait for two weeks for parts to come," Cotton says.
Swiss beef, mashed spuds, beets, blueberry pie and sugar pie temptations are on the lunch menu. On another afternoon, we might have done a fire drill. A week later on the Cabot, we did and I played my part: Squirreled away behind one of the wheelhouse exits, life jacket and survival suit at my feet, I watched the crew running motors and swinging around life rafts and hoses.
The sea builds all evening. Reflective vests swing back and forth on wall hooks in my quarters. I swallow two Gravol.
Sunday morning I enjoy my private shower. I appear on the bridge at 0600h, just as sunbeams touch down on Cape Ray, the southwest corner of Newfoundland. Captain Belley radios a position report and estimated time of arrival to St. John's.
ETAs are important: Unionized docks workers are scheduled ahead of time and Oceanex's trucking division must be primed. "We have to make appointments with our customers to deliver the containers," explains terminal manager Diane Reid during a chat in her St. John's office.
The Oceanex Avalon, Cabot and the Oceanex Sanderling, which sails between Halifax, Corner Brook and St. John's, handle more than 50% of the freight coming into Newfoundland.
We are making 20 knots on four-metre seas, with a 40-knot northwesterly wind. Through my Pentax 10 x 50s (officers on the bridge keep their own binoculars handy), I spy the 128-metre long Sichem Montreal 14 NM away. Spray flies from her bow as she plunges into the waves. Six hours later the 518-metre high cliffs of Little Miquelon materialize.
Ships' captains constantly plot the safest, most comfortable route. During one hurricane last August, Oceanex Avalon hid for a day in Fortune Bay, behind the Burin Penin- sula. If push comes to shove, captains leaving St. John's will even take Oceanex Avalon or Cabot counterclockwise around the Rock, instead of west along the southern shore.
Icebergs are avoided like the plague, says second officer Terry Kean, a Newfoundland native. "A rule of thumb is to stay one-and-a- half to two miles away from them. In the spring when there are icebergs, we check down to seven or eight knots. We put a watch on the bow. If you hit one of those growlers [baby bergs] going at speed you will probably make it to St. John's, but you will be going to the dry dock."
Sunday afternoon I accompany crewmaster Daniel Ouellet on deck to compare the set temperatures with inside temperatures on 13 reefers. "Very few people understand what we do," Captain Hynes tells me later. "For example, we have a standing offer with one customer to provide heated service from November 1 to April."
The weather has been beautiful. I have passed hours on the high platforms behind the wheelhouse, living my dream of being on the ocean with no land in sight.
By 0315h Monday we pass Petty Harbour. Soon hills sprinkled with lights in still-sleeping St. John's heave in sight. Captain Belley squeezes through The Narrows beneath Signal Hill. He pirouettes again and backs the Oceanex Avalon into her berth at the far end of the harbour. CT&L