Mountain of a ship comes to visit

BRADLEY AMBROSE/Taranaki Daily News

BIG VIEW: Crewmen make the most of the view as the MV Tampa arrived at Port Taranaki.

When a port is going to host its biggest-ever ship, it pays to take all the precautions.

That was the scenario at Port Taranaki early yesterday for the arrival of the massive 66,6365-tonne carrier MV Tampa, which in terms of gross volume was the biggest ship to berth in New Plymouth.

Because of the sheer bulk of the ship, for the first time ever the port's operations staff decided to use three large tugs to guide the Tampa into the harbour.

But they weren't needed. Conditions were perfect for the dawn arrival, which made the berthing at Blyde Terminal an easy operation.

"There were no problems at all. We were expecting a fairly strong wind, but it didn't happen," said deputy harbourmaster John Ireland.

The Tampa visited Port Taranaki to unload two Czech Republic-built generators for Contact Energy's new $250 million gas-fired peaking power station at Stratford. It departed for Noumea yesterday afternoon.

The Tampa was at the centre of a major diplomatic dispute in 2001 when it rescued 438 Afghani refugees from a fishing vessel in international waters but was then refused entry into Australian waters.

- © Fairfax NZ News