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SINGAPORE STRAIT (MALAYSIAN WATERS) - MARCH 2013
This is the first page depicting ships photographed in Asian and African waters during a recent cruise on the ms AMSTERDAM from Hong Kong to Cape Town. While it would seem to be more logical to begin with Hong Kong, many of the ships seen there belong to the Chinese "ghost fleet" of unregistered, unclassified ships and are, therefore, difficult to identify and research. I will include a page of these at a future date, assuming I can find a Cantonese speaker!
The sequence below begins just after dawn on March 17th when the AMSTERDAM was entering the Malay side of the Singapore Strait from the South China Sea. During passage westwards towards Singapore there is approximately 25 km of the Strait in Malaysian territorial waters. It is this stretch where the following photographs were taken.
The weather was quite good early morning - cloudy with sunny breaks. As the day wore on heavy cloud cover developed with brief tropical downpours but also a little sun. The temperature was in the mid-30s (C) - so high that my camera viewfinder was reporting dangerously high operating temperatures. With a dense blue haze pervading for much of the day, photographic quality varied between good, bad and indifferent depending on how far away the ships were. Most were in the 1 to 5 km range. I have selected a few of the better and more interesting shots to place on view - some poor ones too, taken as a shower approached!
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Above: The Singaporean container ship CHANA BHUM is about to overtake the Indian-owned bulker PRABHU PARVATI en route to Singapore. In the background, the Norwegian bulker VELA heads for the South China Sea. Details of these ships are given below. (Click the photo to enlarge).
(For the latest news relating to the eastern Canadian shipping scene and Halifax in particular, please refer to Mac MacKay's excellent ShipFax Blog and it's sister-blog "Tugfax" accessed from the left hand menu bar of ShipFax). ___________________________________
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