Interdasting...

My free commentary being worth less than what you paid for it, I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks this morning, vis my observations this weekend. 

 I saw a whole bunch of small container ships that are new to me, visiting the terminal in NJ that usually only berths large ships.

 So at two different points in the same day, I saw small  (< Old Panamax) ships leaving Elizabeth/Newark.  Both completely and fully loaded with boxes just under the windows on the bridge, and yet both with their bulbous bows way way TF out of the water, in ballast position. 

 Full ship with light draft= empty boxes. 

 

      One of the big players waved some money under the nose of a small company and got them running empty containers is my guess. Larger companies do keep small ships on their books to service islands and small ports around the world, so it's also possible that one of the big players just diverted a ship and sent it over here to get some boxes out of the way, but I can't imagine that they'll go all the way to China with them. 

 Well, today there's another ship, the TAMPA TRADER, visiting us from the far off land of Canada, home of beer, hollywood comedians, and being arrested for being mean on the internet. Same thing happening so far. Another cookie-cutter 1000 TEU ship, although the Trader usually runs a triangle trade route between Florida, New Brunswick in Canada, and Jamaica. The Trader is either chartered or owned (it's hard to say) by ZIM, the smallest of the large container companies, whose baliwick seems to be mostly servicing medium to smaller ports via a hub-and spoke-system like the airlines do. Jamaica being one of Zim's hubs, I won't know until she sails whether she's cubed out with empties or not. I'm at anchor for the day, with a good view of the Verrezano Narrows, where shipping must pass to get to sea.