Morning and welcome to Friday’s Ships Blog. Frosty and foggy start to this morning. The wind has picked up and the sun has broken through clearing the fog. Wind in the East so still feeling cool. Its forecast to stay in the east over the weekend but the sun is going to shine especially during Saturday. Again another good weekend for getting jobs done on the boats before the Easter rush. Here is today’s Inshore Forecast:
Gibraltar Point to North Foreland
For coastal areas up to 12 miles offshore from 0600 UTC Fri 28 Mar until 0600 UTC Sat 29 Mar
24 hour forecast:
Wind Easterly 3 or 4, occasionally 5 in north.
Sea State Slight or moderate.
Weather Showers at first.
Visibility Moderate or good.
Outlook for the following 24 hours:
Wind Easterly or southeasterly 3 or 4.
Sea State Slight or moderate.
Weather Fair.Visibility Good.
Today’s Tides: HW 09.41 3.81 M LW15.27 0.62M HW 22.04 3.70 Predicted depth over the sill at low water today 2.12M.
Don’t forget that the clocks go forward this weekend by 1 hour.
In the harbour to day we have the Eugen Maersk berthed on Trinity 7. She is one of Maersk’s E class ships at 170794 Gross tonnes and 398M long carrying a maximum of 15000 TEU or containers. In the yard Andy is launching one of the pilot boats and La Boheme a Macwester has been moved to the workshop for some welding work by Gary our engineer. These E class ships will now be visiting Felixstowe on a monthly basis. Other news hot off the press. The extension to Trinity 8 and 9 at the end of Landgard, will start on 31st March. This comprises a 190M finger extension 94m wide and will allow another E class ship to be berthed on that quay. A further three cranes will arrive from the Far East for this extension. With regard to Stone Point and access to the Backwaters there is a further campaign of Plough dredging planned to commence the beginning of April to ease the silting problems that are occurring in the area.