Sea Star expands fleet; jobs to followThe ship is slated for travel to and from Puerto Rico during peak seasons.
By TIMOTHY J. GIBBONS, The Times-Union The new ship, which will be named El Faro-- Spanish for "lighthouse" -- should go into service the first week of March, which the company president said would allow Sea Star to provide better customer service as well as take care of its two existing ships more efficiently. "Now, whenever we put a ship into dry dock, we go down to one ship," said Frank Peake, Sea Star Line's president and chief operating officer. "This ship will give us a spare plus an insurance policy." El Faro will also be used during peak season, increasing the number of trips Sea Star makes to the commonwealth. The company's current ships -- El Morro and El Yunque -- sail for the island on Fridays and Saturdays; El Faro will leave port on Tuesdays when it is not filling in for one of the other ships. The new ship should be deployed about 35 weeks out of the year, Peake said, substituting for one of the company's other vessels for about 10 of those weeks. Like the company's other ships, El Farocan carry the equivalent of 1,200 twenty-foot-long shipping containers and will haul everything from automobiles to groceries to dry goods. Sea Star is one of four steamship companies that carry cargo between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico and has historically also bought space on ships owned by Horizon Lines, the other company that sends ships to the island. The other two competitors -- Trailer Bridge and Crowley Liner Services -- use a tug and barge system, in which the cargo is placed on large vessels towed by barges, a method that takes longer but the companies say has cost advantages.
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