By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTFor several years, officials of Port Canaveral have been proponents of short-sea shipping, and, thanks to recent occurrences at the Central Florida port, that vision is coming closer to reality. At the Jan. 16 meeting of the Canaveral Port Authority, Rick Armstrong, executive secretary of the Seaport Advisory Council of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, shared hopes that short-sea vessel traffic may come to fruition between Port Canaveral and such Bay State ports as Fall River and perhaps Gloucester, New Bedford and/or Salem. “We both believe the time for studies is over,” said Lauren Kotas Brand, senior director of business development at Port Canaveral. “It’s time to identify it, work it and move it.” While Port Canaveral officials have identified Sunshine State agricultural products such as oranges, tomatoes and onions as potential northbound cargoes, Massachusetts counterparts are researching what goods could make the southbound trip on short-sea vessels as they travel off the Atlantic Coast. The container-carrying short-sea vessels would provide a fuel-efficient transportation alternative to trucks making the 1,300-plus-mile trek along the congested Interstate 95 corridor. Finding the right combination of origin and destination ports for two-way commerce of full containers is imperative for short-sea shipping to work, said Brand, who first attended a conference on short-sea shipping in 2001. Port Canaveral, best known for its cruise business and healthy breakbulk and bulk trades, is taking a stride into the containerized cargo sector through a recently signed agreement with G&G Shipping, an 18-year-old carrier that has focused on serving the Bahamas and other Caribbean markets from a shallow-draft Dania Beach terminal just south of South Florida’s Port Everglades. The G&G operation is to begin in early March with a charter service and soon become a regular service carrying containers and general cargo between Port Canaveral and ports of the Bahamas and elsewhere in the Caribbean. G&G is one of three cargo lines currently making regular calls at Freeport, the others being global carrier Mediterranean Shipping Co. (which uses the port as a major transshipment hub) and Port of Palm Beach-based Tropical Shipping, according to Brand. Port Canaveral is 180 nautical miles from Freeport, making the trip a short-sea one as measured by distance, although not by the definition of the U.S. Maritime Administration’s Short Sea Shipping Initiative, which considers short-sea shipping as maritime moves along coastlines and/or inland waterways using U.S.-built vessels. G&G principals Steve Ganoe and Mike Grandonico have operated since August 2006 a separate venture, St. Johns Ship Building, which at its Palatka, Fla., facility makes vessels well-suited to short-sea shipping, including those with a capacity of 130 twenty-foot-equivalent container units. Jim Hampel, G&G’s chief operating officer, said the 190-mile distance between Dania Beach and Port Canaveral – typically covered by truck on I-95 – could be a future candidate for short-sea shipping, but he said immediate prospects are limited. As Brand noted, “Maybe the cost of fuel isn’t high enough yet.”