Sun Ruby, a 580-foot log ship, spent the week at the Port of Port Angeles T-Pier taking on a load of logs.
This is the second time this year she has been dockside for a load of cargo, and it marks the 11th time in 2011 that a log ship has visited Port Angeles.
In 2010, the Port of Port Angeles was visited by eight ships that were loaded with about 19 million board feet of logs bound for the Asian market.
At the beginning of this year, it was anticipated that 2011 would see a like number of log ships come to Port Angeles for about 24 million board feet.
Those early projections have easily been surpassed.
It is reasonable to surmise that the 2011 total numbers will double — if not triple — by year’s end.
I was not around during the last 40 years of the 20th century, when it was not uncommon for a hundred or more cargo ships a year to come to Port Angeles to take on logs and lumber.
Hanging around the waterfront watching and listening as personnel with varied responsibilities went about the tasks of loading the log ships has been quite an eye-opener for me.
As logs exports came of age in the 1970s and ‘80s, the shipping companies began designing and building vessels with log handling in mind.
The holds were configured so they would hold logs that are 40 feet long, hatch covers were designed to withstand the pressure of thousands of tons of cargo being stowed upon them — and the cranes used to load and unload the logs evolved to a style which today can rotate 360 degrees.
Likewise, the port and the longshoremen improved their respective processes to maintain their competitiveness.
At one time, longshoremen worked in 12-member crews called gangs and loaded about 150,000 board feet of waterborne logs per shift.
However, there was fierce competition between Puget Sound ports for not only the log business but finished lumber products as well.
In the mid-1980s, the port and local longshoremen’s union collaborated on streamlining the process and developed a methodology that shifted the loading process out of the water and onto land.
By January 1986, a gang was able to load 180,000 board feet per shift, and within six months that figure had swollen to an average of nearly 274,000 board feet for an eight-hour shift.
That also reduced the size of the gang to eight longshoremen.
These changes kept the port competitive to such a degree that ITT Rayonier and Weyerhaeuser, who owned their own dock facilities elsewhere, chose to use Port Angeles for their shipping needs.
When log exports dried up in the late ‘90s, there followed a period of 10 years or more when nary a log ship graced the horizon.
Efficiencies borne of experience and expertise in the handling of logs became lost arts as the local knowledge pool dried up.
In March 2010, with the arrival of the log ship, Koombana Bay, there was a bit of re-education that had to take place. Men and machinery not used to the new tasks were at times taxed to the breaking point.
But with a persistence borne of a desire to provide a competitive product, all of the stakeholders have, in effect, relearned what it takes to get the job done.
Most of the logs being shipped from Port Angeles go to China or Korea.
Cargo bound for China is a bit easier to handle because it is generally intended for a single customer and will be unloaded at one port.
On the other hand, logs bound for Korea can be for as many as three or four customers at two or three different discharge ports.
When cargo is intended for different customers, it becomes necessary to mark off each customer’s product to assure that the customer receives what was contracted for.
Loading the ship is something of an art.
Simply stated, it is all about the weight.
The maximum a ship can carry is stated in terms of deadweight tonnage (DWT), which is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, freshwater, ballast water, provisions, crew and, in the case of cruise ships, passengers.
Within the controlling concept of weight is the critical issue of where the weight is placed and where the center of gravity of the ship is when fully loaded.
The bulk of the cargo aboard a log ship will be in the holds, so it makes some sense that is where most of the weight will be.
However, the placement of that weight needs to be such that heavier and lighter logs are carefully dispersed throughout the load so as not to impinge upon the ship’s seaworthiness.
For example, the two types of logs being loaded aboard Sun Ruby are hemlock and fir.
Hemlock weights approximately 5.8 metric tons per thousand board feet and fir weighs about 5.2.
If too much hemlock — the heavier log — is loaded too close to the keel, it causes the ship’s rolling motion to have an abrupt snap to it.
This will eventually cause the load that is stacked on deck to loosen up, shift and start beating against the stanchions.
If this were to happen during stormy conditions, no crew members will be available to go on deck to tighten the load.
The stanchions will ultimately give way, and the logs will be lost overboard.
Optimally, when the ship is loaded, the center of gravity will be just a smidgen (not a scientific term) below the main deck.
The general rule of thumb is that the center of gravity should be at about that spot below the main deck that is equal to 3 percent of the ship’s beam.
In the case of Sun Ruby with a 91-foot beam, that would be about 3 feet below the deck.
When Sun Ruby departs for China this weekend — she still was in port at 5 p.m. Saturday — she will be carrying about 5.7 million board feet of logs that were harvested from private lands in our state.
It was only about 18 months ago that logs were being loaded into containers for shipment overseas — about 3,500 board feet per container.
Now we are seeing a somewhat steady flow of ships eager to take on logs for delivery to overseas markets.
Although it is unlikely that Port Angeles will revisit the halcyon days of shipping — days about which it was written that the port had shipped out enough logs in the previous decade to “lay a boardwalk to the moon and back” — it is none-the-less nice to see steady commercial activity at the port bringing in living-wage jobs for a cross-section of the North Olympic Peninsula work force.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats, ships and strolling the waterfront.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome. Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.