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Vehicle carrier makes first call in Charleston
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
The hulking MV Faust, which entered service May 27 as a member of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen fleet, made its maiden call earlier this month to the Port of Charleston.
Only weeks earlier, the ship-which has the capacity to carry up to 8,004 cars on 13 decks-had been in the possession of its maker, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering of South Korea.
“Here she is, our newest and largest pure car-truck carrier. In fact, it’s now the largest car carrier registered in Sweden,” said Anthony Perez, operations manager for Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s Charleston operation. “It’s so big that width-wise it just barely fit through the
Panama Canal. But the really exciting attributes of the ship are all inside.”
As Perez and his party stood at the top of the ramp at the stern of the ship, one of those other attributes was instantly evident: its series of six movable decks that allow for a wide variety of storage options.
On this morning in Charleston, the lowest of the movable decks had been raised to just feet below the deck above it, allowing for the transport of several buses bound for offloading in Brunswick, Ga., and a number of large tractors and construction vehicles, many of which were coming ashore in Charleston.
“This ship is very adaptable,” said Joakin Carlsson, one of 21 Swedish crewmen on board for the ship’s maiden trans-Atlantic journey. “It doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle you want to ship, we have lots of flexibility.”
In fact, in addition to automobiles and tractors, other Wallenius Wilhelmsen vessels have transported military aircraft and helicopters and, on one occasion, a space shuttle.
Charleston shines among ports Prior to arriving in Charleston, the MV Faust and its crew stopped at the Port of New York and New Jersey and the Port of Baltimore. After its stop in Georgia, it begins its nine-day journey back to Europe, where it will visit eight ports before beginning its trans-Atlantic odyssey all over again.
“All told, it’s about a five-week endeavor, making the entire circuit,” said Captain Bjorn H. Larde.
Larde, who’s been a seaman for the last 30 years and a captain for about four, said he particularly likes to visit Charleston because it’s an easy harbor to traverse and because the port terminals are close to the open ocean, compared with other ports.
“Getting to the Port of Baltimore, for instance, takes about eight hours in the company of the river pilots who guide you to the terminal,” he said. “The Port of Savannah takes about three hours, while the Port of Charleston, only one.”
“Time is money,” Perez interjected as the captain nodded his agreement. “Timing is everything in the shipping business.”
The other benefit of calling on the Port of Charleston Union Pier terminal is it is right in the heart of downtown, within easy walking distance of a supermarket, restaurants and other stores.
“There’s a beautiful city just beyond the terminal gate,” Larde said. “Most ports around the world are very remote and you have to rely on a taxi or bus to get you anywhere.”
Environmental innovations
A few decks below where Thelonas Bennett and his team of longshoremen were working, 1st Engineer Anders Hagalid monitored technical information about the ship in a well-air-conditioned room adjacent to the four-story engine room.
He beamed with pride as he explained the efficiency of his engine. The ship typically travels at an average of 19 knots and burns about 60 tons of fuel every day. That means the nine-day trip to Europe requires roughly 540 tons of fuel.
But the MV Faust doesn’t burn diesel, Hagalid said. It burns “heavy fuel oil,” basically the waste product left over from the refinement of finer fuels.
“It’s basically like tar,” he said. “In fact we have to heat it to about 140 degrees Celsius before we can put it in the engine.”
While that process, in and of itself, might sound dirty and polluting, Hagalid quickly dispelled such notions. Wallenius Wilhelmsen, he said, has voluntarily become one of the most environmentally friendly shipping lines on the face of the Earth.
“Our fuel has the lowest level of sulfur in the industry, averaging about 1.5 percent,” he said. “The industry average is 3 percent to 5 percent.”
So successful has the company been in this regard that the shipping line recently won the “Clean Seas Award,” one of the prestigious Lloyd’s List awards, for its continuing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its deep-sea operations.
The award citation acknowledged that through the use of low-sulfur fuel, the company has cut its sulfur dioxide emissions by 33.6% over the past six years.
Wallenius Wilhelmsen was the first major shipping company to use low-sulfur fuel.
The shipping line has also voluntarily painted its ships hulls with silicon-based, rather than lead-based, paint to further safeguard the environment, Perez said.
Other steps the company has taken to reduce its impact on the environment is altering the combustion of the main engine to minimize emissions, using biodegradable oil in the stern tubes of the ship, and changing cooling agents in refrigeration plants.
But down in the engine room, Hagalid seemed most excited about a new technology the shipping line has come up with to treat ballast water and prevent micro-organisms from being transplanted from one region to another.
Standing next to the series of tanks and piping and motors that comprise PureBallast, as the system is known, Hagalid said when ballast water comes out of the system and is released into the ocean it’s pure.
“There aren’t even man-made chemicals in it like chlorine,” he said.
Bilge water from the ship is also significantly purified before it is disposed.
In fact, in the engine room of the MV Faust, water processing appeared to be as considerable an activity as making the ship’s propeller turn.
“You see those two large tanks,” Hagalid said as he continued pointing from one innovation to another. “We make our own drinking water out of salt water.”
“The system that fills those tanks will create 25 tons of fresh water over the course of a voyage,” he said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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