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The Zhen Hua 16, carrying four new 100-foot gauge container cranes for the Port of Wilmington, completed the last leg of its ocean voyage, sailing from the Port of Kingston, Jamaica, at 12:20 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, and arriving at the sea buoy off Southport, N.C., at 7:20 p.m. Jan. 31.

The transit was postponed from Friday to Saturday by the Ports Authority, ZPMC, the crane manufacturer, and Gottlieb, Barnett and Bridges, the Authority's engineering consultants for the cranes, in consultation with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Cape Fear River Pilots. Weather and sea conditions Thursday, as seen in the photos at right, prevented the pilots and the Ports and ZPMC crane engineers from boarding the ship to prepare for the transit upriver. The engineers boarded the ship at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 2, and preparations for the transit are on schedule.

NOTE: Cape Fear River closed for crane transit. 

The timing of the final leg depends upon several variables, and it is impossible to say exactly when the ship will move upriver until shortly before the trip begins. Check back here for updates. 

After arriving at the sea buoy off the coast near Southport, the ship will spend the next 36 hours preparing for the last leg of the trip, 26 miles up the Cape Fear River. In addition to clearances by the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, the crew will remove sea fastenings so that the crane booms can be lowered to clear the Progress Energy lines across the river. Click the thumbnail schematic drawing at left to see the dimensions of the vessel and cranes and the clearance based on a current survey of the navigational channel and the lines.

The linchpins of the Port of Wilmington's $143 million container-terminal expansion, the cranes are traveling on the 788-foot Zhen Hua 16, a specialized ship designed to carry the cranes almost completely erected. The ship also carried two cranes for the Port of Kingston, Jamaica, where it stopped first to unload them before continuing on the last leg of the journey to North Carolina. The ship draws about 38 feet of water and is 138 feet wide. With the booms of the cranes extended, it is nearly 430 feet wide.

The ship left the Zhenhua Port Machinery Company's facility in Shanghai, China, Dec. 2. Because of the size of the cranes, neither the Panama Canal nor the Suez Canal were wide enough to accommodate the ship, so the route took it across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, then north and west across the Atlantic Ocean.

This map shows the progress of the cranes around the world as reported by ZPMC.

Click the thumbnail schematic drawing for details about the cranes, including measurements:

• 100 feet between the legs
• 165-foot outreach (the boom that goes over the ship to lift containers off)
• 235 feet tall with the boom down in the working position and 345 feet with the boom up in its stowed position 

Click the thumbnail conceptual drawing to see how the Port of Wilmington's container yard expansion will look including the four new cranes, shown at the right. Notice the width of the 100-foot gauge rails and the distance between the legs of the new cranes, compared to the existing four cranes on 50-foot gauge rail.