On the quay
Notes from three days at a Ro-Ro ramp
A Ro-Ro ramp announces itself before you see the ship. You hear the marshalling yard: engines at idle, a whistle, the particular clatter of a trailer being told to wait. Those sounds are the occupancy story. The annual call count is not.
On the first morning we stood back from the traffic plan and watched where the yard filled relative to the advertised arrival. The ship was on time. The yard was early. Trailers had been sent down from the inland depot on a timetable that assumed a clear ramp. The ramp was not clear; a late discharge from the previous sailing still occupied the last lanes. The occupancy chart for that berth would later show a spike that looked like ‘congestion’. On the ground it was a depot clock set against a ship clock.
The second day was a cancelled sailing. The yard still filled. Drivers had not been told. That day taught us to ask, in every Ro-Ro study, who owns the message to the inland yard. If the answer is ‘the agent, sometimes’, the charts need a footnote.
The third day was ordinary and therefore valuable. The night crew used different names for the same lanes. Our draft had to be corrected. We now ask for the night board’s vocabulary before we letter a chart. A harbour office briefing that uses only the day shift’s words will be politely ignored after 18:00.
If you instruct a harbour activity study that includes a ramp, budget for us to be there at the marshalling peak, not only at the advertised arrival. The peak is when the paper and the ground disagree.