Port Hedland 2/9/15 Big, bigger, the
biggest
It seems that PH doesn’t have a high ranking for caravaners but it’s certainly worth a visit. Everything is big: boats, trains, salt mountains, iron ore, midgees and prices. Martin went on a Seafarer harbor tour (boating again – no, thanks. Sarah and I went to the playground instead and had a great time).
The Seafarer tour I did was great. This was a tour from one boat to the other, picking up seafarers for a bit of relaxing and recreation on shore. It was just amazing seeing those big boats within arm reach. Port Hedland port is mostly used by BHP for their iron ore export. They currently have 7 berths for boats up to 300m in length, 50m wide and about 20m deep (waterline). Those bulk boats can carry in excess of 250,000 tons of iron ore. There are several more berths belonging to FMG and the port (public berths). Two new berths, belonging to Gina Reinhardt, will fill their first boat soon and BHP has plans to build an offshore facility for even bigger boats. BTW Rio Tinto is exporting it’s iron ore out of 2 different harbors in the Pilbara (Dampier and ??). It’s just incomprehensive how much ore is leaving the country. There is one boat after the other leaving Port Hedland alone.
The entry into the harbor and the channel leading in is as small as 150m wide. It doesn’t take much wind or current for a 300m x 50m boat to come off-course. That’s why they are escorted by 3 tugboats - making sure the big boat is staying in the channel. The tugs are then used to turn the boat around in the harbor and finally pushing the boat sidewise into their allocated berth.
The turnaround time is about 35 hours. It takes about 25-30 hours to fill the ships at a rate of 10.000 t per hour with the rest mainly mooring time. The whole process takes longer because they have to fill up each of the 9 compartments in 20% increments and a circular motion.
