Rather than start a new thread, I figured I'd just bump this one....
I sailed over to Catalina on Sunday and am enjoying myself in sunny Avalon, taking advantage of the "pay two, get five free" mooring rates. (Since I need to get back on Saturday it's only "get four free" for me, but it's still a deal.)
Anyway, I wanted to give you all an update on the amazing situation with the container ships at anchor outside the harbor. It is truly stunning and, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented.
Leaving L.A. Light, there were countless container ships to the east of me (to port) as far as the eye could see. What's also interesting is that it is so congested, even taking into account the outside anchorages, that vessels are being told to drift outside of the TSS (traffic separation scheme) area until space opens up for them at anchor. So last night as I was monitoring the VHF, I heard Vessel Traffic instructing one container ship simply to drift at least 2 miles CPA from the TSS until there is a place for them. This explains some of the ships I was seeing in what would typically be odd places.
I had breakfast this morning with my good friend (and former student) Ron, who is one of the supervisors at the Avalon Harbor Dept. He told me he was recently "overtown" (what the locals here call the mainland) receiving some training at the Marine Exchange building in San Pedro for some other matter. While there, he got a tour of the control room with its huge monitors, from which they monitor all of the vessel traffic up and down the coast. This shows all the AIS targets as well as whatever their sophisticated radar picks up. (The Marine Exchange building is now located at one of the high spots above Pt. Fermin, above the Korean Bell, for any who are interested.) He said the number of targets clogging the screen was incredible. He also said that he learned something new, and that is that there is actually an area designated off the west end of Catalina as an overflow anchorage for when the others fill up in San Pedro! But since this has not happened before, so far as I know, it's not something that has ever become an issue. Now, however, Vessel Traffic has been assigning some vessels to that area. Ron said, though, that the ship captains hate actually anchoring there because it's utterly exposed, so they are opting to drift instead, maintaining just enough way on for steerage. Ron said that when you look at the AIS info, you'll see a number of vessels just off the Island traveling at half a knot or whatever. I can confirm this also, as I noticed a few such containerships when I was about 5 miles off of Avalon. One was a Maersk ship that was doing 0.6 kts. I wondered what the story was with that, and suspected something along these lines. Now I know. (I should mention that this is also consistent with Matt's post earlier.)
Really wild stuff! It had no practical effect on my trip, though, because all of the ships right outside the L.A. Harbor were east of the L.A. Light, and none of the ships that were adrift were in my way, either. But it's definitely good to keep an eye on things.
www.businessinsider.com
I guess I'm just not much of a party person (to greatly understate the matter). I love it over there in the spring, by the way, when the place is nearly empty.
