TERMINAL 5: First cargo-ship call scheduled for this week

(Wikimedia file photo of MSC Monterey)

MONDAY MORNING: We’ve been watching for word of the first cargo-ship call at the first modernized berth at West Seattle’s Terminal 5, and it’s just appeared on the newest Northwest Seaport Alliance calendar update: MSC Monterey is due at Terminal 5 on Thursday afternoon (January 6th). The schedule also shows MSC Margarita scheduled for T-5 two weeks later. Monterey, built in 2007, carries up to 5,000 containers (TEU); Margarita is slightly older and slightly larger, with a capacity of up to 6,000 containers. (That’s about a third of the potential capacity the revamped berth was designed to handle.) According to MarineTraffic.com, Monterey’s last port was Manzanillo, Mexico, from which it departed one week ago. We may hear more about T-5 when the Port of Seattle Commission meets online at noon tomorrow; that’ll be the first meeting for its newly elected commissioners Toshiko Grace Hasegawa and Hamdi Mohamed.

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: The schedule has changed (as, with ships, it often does) and MSC Monterey is now due in Friday morning.

star 55 January 3, 2022 (3:50 pm)

This will surely impact traffic!!

Andy January 3, 2022 (6:23 pm)

6000, 20 Foot containes unloaded and lined up end to end would be 22 Miles of container space.How many container ships come to Seattle per week?It is amazing how the distribute these all of these.

Flo B January 3, 2022 (8:48 pm)

Andy. The “teu” description is from the beginning of the container era. It stands for “twenty-foot equivalent unit” as original containers were 20′. Shippers quickly realized it was more efficient to go to 40′ containers to today when 53′ is the norm. That original nomenclature has become the standard so when a ship owner orders a new container ship it’s not ordered by length but by the number of 20′ containers it could hold. So when you see the ship on Thursday you won’t see 5,000 containers but will have to do the math as to how many 53′ containers it’s actually carrying. The math would be 5,000 x 20 divided by 53(with probably a sprinkling of 40′).

George Playath January 7, 2022 (4:03 pm)

Almost no ocean containers are 53’. You’re probably thinking of trailer truck van lengths which are typically 53’. Most ocean containers are 40’, with some 20’. Since these are divisible into each other they work together on the same ship. 53’ wouldn’t work.

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