instal 6 from salerno 19may 2012

instal 6 3/5/12
well finally a planetary alignment......no word from shipping agent to contrary so assumed ship had turned up southampton....picked up 1.00pm by good old smyth who took us down to southampton....bloody good of him as he was flat out in meetings all morning and it was a lot further than i thought....even using the m25 and the m3 , it still took 2 solid hours to get to s/ampton....fortunately he knew the layout of the docks and we virtually came on the grande ellade straight away but getting on it was a bit more of a rigmarol , mostly because port security convinved themselves that we were going on the grand opera which was a cruise ship moored just behind....and they had a good attempt at putting our luggage on her but eventually we convinced them that we were going on the grimaldi line ship next door so without any ceremony we were told to drive to the roll on ramp at the rear of the ship ....two of the mates came and took our suitcases and passports and we were aboard ..3.30pm....no customs or any other buerocracy....ship keeps passports and issues a travel chit when we are in port.....despite shipping agent trying to spook us by saying to get down as close to lunch as possible because ship would sail about 6.00pm i had a feeling that wouldnt happen to a ship that was already running two weeks late....was actually 9.30pm on the dot when we pulled away.....before that we had our first dinner bang on 6.00pm.....we eat with officers although they are staggered depending on what watch they are on.....pleasantly surprised no pasta first off......soup....half hot chicken with salad....cheese board and as many large choclate eclares as you wanted ...washed down with small bottle of complimentary wine ..each....(only seem to have white wine but cant complain as this is a dry ship and only passengers are allowed pop ...you get one with lunch and dinner).....breakfast is continental with piza at 7.30 sharp and lunch at 11.00...which was 3 course today.....
grande ellade is essentially a car transporter....the bottom two decks are full of containers....the 3rd deck is the level at which we entered and has general cargo eg tractors heaps of jcbs.. boats , small houses etc and the next 7 decks above that are all cars....about 2500 of them in fact of all shapes and sizes....mostly new but some second hand....most of new ones are european....a lot of them are destined for israel .but of course we drop off at all the ports on way and pick up as well...by far the most popular new car on this trip is the left-hand drive ford focus...car transporting out of southampton is big business as docks are lined with multi storied car storage buildings
havent got specs on ship yet but she is typical shape for a car transporter..(yes i have now ...she is 182 m loong and gross tonnage is just over 52000 ..bridge is right at front and we all live on the top (deck 10)...it is a long way down to water.....normally the crew is 25 total counting officers , deck crew and drivers but we also have 8 cadets and a trainer from a nautical institute in naples...we are dropping them off at our first stop in salerno......there are only 3 of us as passengers at moment....me and kate plus a retired englishman( a man of tne world aka...a good bastard in our parleonce )called malcolm who lives in cypress....he has been back holidaying in england and heading home ....he has his mitsy 4x4 on one of the decks as you are allowed to do....cost him about 400 euro for vehicle....by a coincidence he was part owner of two abbotoirs in britains when he was in business and is a keen trapshooter so we have a bit to compare !!
officers all appear to be italian....friendly but distant.....captain is a dead ringer for woody allen...wears a merchant navy captains jacket but down the bottom old jeans and very fancy shoes....a bit like a tv newsreader....deck crew look to be from philippines.....only one mess man called joe joe who has to wait on all of us , as well as help cook and sprint of to make our beds in the morning...so he is lke a one-armed bandit...all signage is in italian and english and apparently the language on the bridge is all english...so every one seems to have a smattering of it....we didnt go on bridge last night as we sailed down the solent as pitch black unfortunately so not worth effort....we are allowed on bridge but you have to formally ask when you get to door and you have to be dressed right
we share a small rec room with the officers which has a library ,.sterio , tv and dvd player but everything appears to be old vhs tapes and no player but wont matter as compliments of wayne morrison we have a portable hard drive and media player which will hook up to tv ok and on it are 176 movies as well as about 300hrs of tv shows if we need to fill in time.....we do have live tv in dining room but it is all italian and seems to feature game shows,cooking and ncis...cold case etc(seems to be a world -wide reciepy for boring tv)....all english programs are voice over in italian
we have a small gym which will be useful with the food we are stuffing in or else i will have to be off to oxfam for bigger trou when we get back!!....so all in all we will have a relaxing 6 days to our first stop in salerno.....writing this 2.0 pm on 4th , our first day at sea although wont turn up on blog until get to salerno as we dont have internet access except to send emails at $2 each which is a paradox in that i have given up emails for live blogs.....we are well out into channel...16 hrs since sailed) and ship is as steady as if she was still tied to dock.....no vibration from motors and if you didnt look out the port holes you wouldnt know we were at sea but dont expect it to last as part of the reason she was late was heavy seas and i bet she can roll a bit and we will sure notice it being this high off the water..................well that might do for now writing this in word pad for now....sorry no capital letters or spellcheck
sat 5 may
duck shooting for some....not much sign around here though.....yesterday was leaden sky and bloody rain.....today on the improve...sun and good out of wind....but not too many spots to get away from that....is a very stiff sea breeze....lots of swallows still flying around on top deck....i guess they are hitch-hiking back to capistrano which is where snoopy thinks they go to
getting into routine now.....this is one of the reasons i wanted to go on a freighter and not a passenger ship.....here all your time is discetionary so you can relax and plan your day around meal times..no body tells you to do anything...on a liner i reckon you would be worn out from micro-management and running about trying not to miss out on things........here its breakfast at 7.30 then i go out on deck with my am/fm radio and do a radio check so i can try and work out where we are.....there are heaps of stations on both bands but good old bbc has gone today and all sound spanish which is no surprise given we are well into the bay of biscay.....fm stations are mostly yaa-yaa and a lot of music in english ....the same sort of lady gaa gaa crap you get in good old nz....would suit my fellow tractor drivers at dobbie farms !!....cant get an english lanuage news update though so getting withdrawl symptoms there
then its the gym till lunchtime did 20 km on bike today...is a good exercycle and is progmammable to whatever terrain you want....kate is got the treadmill mastered and is doing a few k a day on that to free her ankles up after the damage i did making her walk around london anzac day....malcom is into rowing so we are at least getting rid of some of the calories
after the three course lunch i have been spending a few hours a day driving this keyboard either on blogs or else on writing projects i have had rattling around in my head for years
late yesterday we had some real finegand style entertainment....they deciced to do a trial evacuation about 4.30pm....there was lots of milling about but we duly waited around with our lifejackets until joe-joe came and got us ....he was obviously warden in charge of passengers which included the visiting cadets......then the senario came over the tanoy....fire in galley.....report to port-forward muster station..(couldnt go to normal way out as that goes past the galley )..it was in english and poor old j-j is pidgeon english at best and we found he had us on starboard side so then we had to get back thru ship which isnt as easy as you might think as it is a maze and all companionways look the same but we got to the right place in the end....all the time there was plenty of hoo-haa going on over the speakers....after we got counted they said to go back and get camera and come round outside to galley to capture the action....they had a smoke machine running inside and smoke was pouring out the vents....looked quite realistic....some of the cadets were kitted out in firesuits and b.a's and sent in....they duely came out dragging one of the phillies who was the designated victim and did a bit of work on him while others manned firehoses and shot a bit of water around the place.....just when we thought it was over the bridge officer came on the tanoy and said "fire is out of control.....fire is out of control.....prepare to abandon ship ".....by now there were klaxons sounding everywhere and they started blowing the ships horn in short rapid bursts....even although everyone knew it was an exercise is still made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as there is nothing as god-damned mornful as a ships foghorn sounding out what could be her own death knell if thats what it sounds like........so they knocked the shackles off the starboard lifeboat ( these are fully enclosed boats ....look like two conventional lifeboats glued one upside down on top of the other ....there is a small box on top rear with windows which is where helmsman sits on high seat with his head in so he can see....no other portholes. ...this type of lifeboat holds 42 people and if there is a problem with it then there are two of those 25 man rafts beside it which look like big drums and are common all round the world.....this set up is duplicated on both sides of ship in case either one side of ship is on fire or else listing in which case you couldnt launch the up hill boat ).....so all in all there is capacity for over 90 on each side and we are only 38 all counted.......anyway us and the cadets climb aboard.by now we are under command of 1st mate...there is enough room inside to walk around ...and you all sit round the walls all the way around and strap yourself in with full harness over both shoulders.....now i can see why there were hard hats in our cabin with the lifejackets....everyone except us was wearing one....nobody said anything but i could see that in a real senario even although there was a rubber strip runnung around behind your head , there was also hatch catches that would mash your head in heavy seas......by now we were joined by captain "woodie" still wearing his open masters sea jacket but he had upgraded to designer jeans but no fancy shoes today....he gave a long lecture in italian to to cadets and then thanked us profusely in english for being patient and answered a few questions we had (previously the most we had got out of him was a very eloquent hello....although we know he speaks fluent english)....one of the things he told us was that while the lifeboat only does 6 knots and has a range of only a few hours , the story is you dont go anywhere....you stay near the ship....if she sinks you stay on the spot over where she went down....every ship has a transponder which tells anyone that wants to know....who she is...where she is....where she came from and where she is going.....and believe me there is a lot of shipping in these parts so you wouldnt have to wait long.......what i saw has filled me with confidence that in the very unlikely event that we had a hoo-haa then these boys would handle it ok
the first mate is pretty much the proverbial kiwi hard case.....he is fairly wild and woolly....reminds me of the french rugby player with glasses added so have nick-named him "chabal"....it was he who suggested i go back and get the camera to film all this drama and in summing up the exercise he said that is pretty much how they would do it except while we were actually hanging in the davits....they didnt swing us out over the side as it was blowing a stiff breeze and we were still steaming full ahead all the time when you would normally be stopped.....and the company sort of frowned on hanging passengers over the side in such conditions
...after we finished the exercise chabal said for us to wait around as he wanted to show the cadets something.....the bosun turned up with what looked like two innocent plastic buckets ....about the size and colour of an 8 liter pale of solarguard paint.....he pointed one over the side and with chabal steadying his shoulders from behind , he pulled a toggle on the back of it....HOLY MOTHER.....what came out of that bucket was the closest i'm probably ever likely to see of a ground to air missile....some sort of charge kicked it clear of the operator and then the rocket ignited with the roar of an f16 on take-off......very impressive....they were line throwers designed to shoot 250m of line to another ship in the event that you needed to do such a thing.....they fired them both off as they were past their use by dates but they had removed the rope....if you fired one of those off in your lounge you would end up with some serious redecorating to do.....i thought of the dunedin varsity students in the old days of the skyrocket - wars.....what they could have done with some of these....or ham radio operators like ron,john or cliff using surf casters to try and get ropes over tall trees to rig antennas !!
..so that sure filled in till dinner....rh
sun 6 may
did my 20 k bike ride and running late for lunch...however found lunch was delayed till 12 today....went out on deck....there is a small after- deck behind galley....discovered cook given day off ... chabal and the boson cooking meat on large charcol barby....more smoke around than yesterdays exercise......went into mess and all officers present are in street gear......in waltzed woody....a good eccentric after my own heart....while everyone else was dressed down....he for the first time was in an immaculatly pressed merchant navy kakhi uniform except no epilets or rank....he banged a queen cd on the sterio. did a few boogying movements...gathered the cadets around him for a photo shoot....and then he came over to us(i think he is warming to us loopies ) and explained "...sorry for the weet but today we are having the "greeell" (aka grill or barby)...we said was it a special occassion?....he say "noo we are jest a feeling happy today ".....by this stage heaps of food was piling up on the buffet and he started dishing up for everone himself ....he had all his people at one long table and us 3 parked nearby....he selected one of the cadets and put him in his own seat at the head of the table and he took a seat in the middle and orgestrated the occassion from there( i remembered a very similar occasion last century when i sailed back home from britain on the mv nz waitangi...the skipper put on a crew barby out on the poop deck then and it was also a fairly riotus affair)...i think this occassion was designed to show the cadets that life at sea is not all boredom and set routine....apart from the saluteying various cadets had to eat pieces of bread with humungous mountains of nuttellow on it to the accompanyment of much ammusement so im not sure that was a reward or what the go was there...they are big consumers of nuttellow
(a note on the ships captain....he is bigger than god...whatever he says goes without argument....he normally arrives at dinner with his enterage of officers etc trailing behind....if they are there first they remain standing until he gets there....if we want to buy a beer from the bar it has to be run past him first etc etc....he polices the law but he has the right to suspend certain ones as well)....the first thing he suspended today was the dry crew ruling ie he "spliced the mainbrace"...and joe-joe was flat out loading the tables up with jugs of vino and there was much "salutei"ing done and after we got on to third course which was huge hunks of very moorish cake...chabal came round with a big plastic bottle of innocent soft drink...haa-haa it was about as innocent as the line-throwers were ..served in those very small paper cups that are normally used for pills...yellow in colour and very thick it is called (phonetically) leemon-chellow....it is 10%lemon syrup and 90% a close relative of pure speedway bike fuel....it has much the same affect as the linethrower when it goes down....in you fuelled the ship with it we would have been in gibralta within the hour.....another thing woody did at this stage was to get up and open the porthole and hand round smokes to anyone who wanted them and it is impressed on my brain the picture of him sitting there wearing his big black horned rim glasses ..under a large no smoking sign puffing up large as that is normally strictly forbidden
..so all in all another good way to pass the arvo..after we finished woody got in and helped tidy everything up into galley as did we as joe-joe obviously off doing his own thing with the deck crew..when they all finally dissapeared off down the ship somewhere we didnt see any of them again for the rest of the day and it was only us 3 who turned out for dinner at 6.00pm......ps for those of you thinking that this is just another costa concordia in the making i should point out that the deck officers rostered for duty that arvo were not part of the knees up !!
a footnote on deck officers:...chabal is first officer but he is in charge of all cargo movements and as such doesnt do bridge watch so we have two 2nd mates....one of them is called jessie...he is a philly and only non-italian officer ....he is a quite sort of guy and we get on pretty good with him and usually go on the bridge during his afternoon watch which is 12.00noon till 4.00pm....then he has 4 off and then does the "deadman" which is midnight to 4.00 am....i think he feels a bit alienated being the only non italian officer and his wife and kid are parked up back in philly and he away at sea most of time....he was telling us he does 6 month contracts but refuses to go on these sort of ships in winter...he said these car transporters are bitches in heavy seas...esp with strong winds on either quarter....then he had a good laugh and said...i no like the rough seas......i asked him what the captain does at sea and he had another burst of amusement and said " he signs papers "....
always on the bridge their must be one deck officer and one able seaman....the abs are all philliys and built like brick toilets..when they are working on deck they wear bands of towling around their foreheads....we call them the "ninjas"...pretty fiendly though...was yarning to one on bridge yesterday....he say they all hate the life cause away from home too long ...he had been 15 years at sea and only had a holiday back in philly at the same time as his wife once.
mon may 7
got up 5.00 still dark but land on both sides one of which was north africa.....bang on 6.0 am as per the plan we are passing gibralta....kiwi cel phone picked up gib....no messages so you must be all alive.....good old bbc loud and strong so got news burst and up with the play on the french elections....at same time radio gibralta running buy-sale and exchange.....sun up and a bloody marvellous spring day in med by 9.0am...sparkly blue water..deck chair time....ive been doing a bit of nostalga in my mind all the way down as we have always had other ships spread out around us all over hells half acre and ive been thinking of the big malta convoys of ww2 that came this exact same route and looking around you can easily imagine what they looked like....a couple of shots of leemon-chello and you would be able to see the destroyers and corvettes fussing around keeping the merchant ships on station.....only difference is we are not zig-zaging.......i was still pondering that issue this morning when we came into the med..(by an errie co incidence my mp3 player was runing on shuffle and somewhere or other it came up with "pomp and curcumstance" from last night at the proms....man was it sureal to have" land of hope ond glory "blasting into your head while pondering such issues!!! .)..one of the most famous tankers of ww2 passed through these straights.......malta was on its knees....out of supplies ...no av gas...spifires flying on thin air etcetc.....(you can google this for a bit of light reading after tea as i am working from memory as no internet )....anyway they had had a lot of convoy failures but they got together one last ditch mission to stop malta falling.....i think it was called operation pedistal and the convoy was Q45 or something like that they got hammered all the way through and there was only one tanker left....she was a texaco ship called the ohio..american but a british crew..she was attacked and hit multiple timesby italian and german bombers but somehow she didnt blow up....finally they disabled her but one of the surviving escort ships managed to take her under tow although she was down to the water line and only the fuel was keeping her afloat....i think because all the av gas was in hold in drums....the entire population of the island turned out to watch the mighty ohio towed into valletta harbour and she saved malta.....she is still there too but you need to be a diver to see her.....and as they say...."the rest is history"
we are really in the good books with woody as he came and got us before while i was starting to write this.....he was having a ceremony for the cadets who are all leaving us at salerno.....because we dont cross the equator , they have a "passing gibralta" ceremony for new recruits.....we had been pondering all morning what the big bowl of sort of instant pudding was outside on the afterdeck but no-one game to taste it as toilets are all blocked today and they are trying to rectify that so imagination running wild....all became clear....us up on car deck above with cameras for birds eye view....smoke machine going in galley again...palls of bloody smoke but no fire alarm.....out of smoke comes" king neptune" aka chibal..he was wearing a sheet and .he had done a top job with two mop heads for hair and beard...also complete with trident....a man of many parts....him and woody line all the cadets up against the wall and there is much loud reading of scrolls and proclomations....then captain ladles a good sized helping of whatever it was onto top of each cadets head and lets it soak in.....then bosun up by us fires up the sea hose and gives them a right good hosing down....woody then presents them all with certificates which have fancy ropework thingies with them and then they all went into sort of a big rugby mall around woody and gave him a right good hugging.....the bosunn gave chabal a right good hosing and they all ended up looking like drowned rats....and that also filled in a good bit of the arvo..
wed 9th
not much chance of developing sea-legs as voyage has been as flat as so far.....our accomodation is on forward half of ship and here you feel little or no engine vibration....in the cabin it isvery hard to tell you are moving.....she leaves little bow wave and we are so high up that you cant hear the water....apart from the noise of the ventilation fans she sails through the sea like a white ghost....sort of a cross between a huge city car park and an iceberg
the mediterranian sea is a bit of a myth....there is no such thing on our charts.....it is a generic name for a group of seas....the first one ex gib. is the alboran sea then past algerian basin into tyrrhenian sea which is where we are at moment...about midnight last night we passed the tip of sardinia..up until today we have had to position the deckies out of the wind as while sun hot , wind not.....but today is gentle breeze and sea is a real deep blue just like the indian ocean off western australia.....ship is plodding along about 16 knots at moment (owners set the speed and they are trying to get us to make up time at the moment.otherwise...slow steaming is common in the shipping world cause of the price of fuel)....as usual she is as steady as a rock , not the slightest sway....on the bridge you can line the foremast up on the horizon and it stays there as if we were fixed to the ocean floor like an oil rig......off the stern before the wake stretched back to the horizon like a gun barrel so there is obviously not much current here
our cabins are inside ones ie no port hole which isnt the end of the world as is good for sleeping right up till breakfast time....i guess you would compare them to a 3 star....bunks on one side and a single on the other....heaps of wardrobe space and a good ensuite ....water tends to be black from time to time probably due to treatment plant but we have as much bottled for drinking as we want....air con has been a bit dodgy and first couple of days cabin like sauna at night but seems to have come right now......there are no tea or coffee making facilities.....but no matter as that was taken care of in paris 2007 when our good old canadian/kiwi pal john wilson gave me a little doofer when we met up for a week back then....it is an element that you put in your cup and 240v it boils water as fast as a jug and i have put it in my traveling gear ever since....by co-incidence my choice of insulated traveling mug i selected for this trip is a university of alberta one that john gave me on another trip.....so good old wilse to the rescue......plugs in europe are all the same ie 2 pin and 240 v.. i had an adapter and who ever it was suggested we take a multiblock thankyou as we have everything known to us electrically plugged into it and for back up i also have my maori adapter for english plugs (ie the aligator clip set-up )
food continues to be good but we have noticed that they are not big on veg except for occassional beans...and meat on the menu tends to be that on its own but we have plenty of apples and pears....the pears look like crap and you would pass them by at the supermarket....but peeled they are the best eating we have ever seen......
the cook is italian and he always wears a blue bandana around his head....he has a very theatrical mostache....naturally i have nick-named him "jack sparrow "
a few days ago while still on the run down to gib we had a big pod of whales go across in front although couldnt get a good look at them as they were mostly just blowing and down again.....but yesterday while on bridge we past one on the surface having a sunbath.....he about 50m off port side and just cruising along puffing small blows out his snorkal.........quite a few turtles as well and dolphins.....a pod had a drag-race with us after breaky today
eta to salerno is 7pm tonight so we are intending to go ashore for a swing on the gate where i may or not get a chance to post this....rh
thur 10 may
well didnt get this sent last night or you would have got it.....we arrived in salerno harbour about 7.30 last night but it took over an hour to get us nudged into wharf and about another half to get ramp down....man it is a massive bit of kit which folds up in a zig-zag and probably weighs a couple of hundred tonnes.....by the time we found the third mate in the mallee to get our chit to go ashore (he didnt have time to print one out so he gave us our passports instead.....didnt matter anyway as nobody on wharf looked at them anyway)....no arrival cards or any of that carry on .(apparently we get one stamp in our passport and that is it as a lot of the european countries have signed an accord named after a town in holland ...sounds something like "shangran" and it declares that there are no borders between those countries anymore)...we just got controller in booth to call us a taxi and we went into town.....on way out of ship it was bedlam....our drivers and about a doz or more from shore flat out unloading cars , a huge boat heaps of jcbs 20 tonnes diggers and the small house..to name just a part of it...it was a bit like getting out of a parking building after the rugby while at the same time loading it for the next function.....the ramp is two way and the drivers are ferried back into ship with a series of mini buses....controlled chaos....lots of tooting yelling and traffic jams....you could easily see how some stuff could end up at the wrong port but havent heard any reports of that....all the cars have the keys in them and i guess the drivers are multi skilled for all the different makes..and they drive like they are in the bathurst 500
....by the time malcolm,kate and i got the ten minute taxi into town it was 10.00pm and shore leave was till midnight and chabal went to great lengths to emphasis that...we are on a quick turn around this time but will stay longer on way back..so no time to look for internet cafes.....salerno is a very old town and we wandered into a maze of narrow cobbled alleys surrounded by very old and very tall buildings ...mostly for foot traffic although just wide enough for a car if necessary.......very scenic it was .....just like in the movies......and believe it or not we found a very nice small bar where we sat and drank tea.....yea right.....ive got to be careful here since this is a blog and malcolms wife(she flew back to cypress just before he came on ship) might stumble upon the link to it......he is a hangman.....wearing his genuine stetson ....complete with real rattlesnake headband...(henceforht he will be refered to as "JR" for obvious reasons!!)..we drank a fair bit of tea.....about 85euro worth in fact before proprietor got us a taxi back to ship in time for 12.00......i guess proprietor thought it was xmas as only two other persons passed briefly through bar while we were there.....i dont think things are very flash economically in italy either
back on ship there was more tea drinking and i had my mp3 running through wayne morrys doofer and into tv in mess much to chabals angst as is about 2.30am by now ship ready to sail and some of his men in cabins near mess trying to sleep
...main event today was passing through the straights of messina which is the narrow bit of water seperating italy from scicily......man they are both rough country and if there is any flat land in either you sure cant see it from the sea....heaps of towns around the coast clinging to mountainsides and loads of tunnels and viaducts linking up the roads....we had to take on a pilot to go through the straits and is quite good to see pilot launch race up along side and him jump onto rope ladder hanging off side at deck 3 level as we were still steaming and he got off same way at other end....we are now in the ionian sea...
...at sea we are not allowed into any of the car decks below level 10 where we are living as apart from possibility of things flying about if we were in heavy seas , the main reason is that iif there was a fire , they can flood all the closed in decks with co2 and that would automatically snuff anyone who was in there at the time....we are however allowed to wander deck 11 which is the one above us as it is open.....there are about 350 cars up there and all second hand imports going to cypress and isreal.....new cars are not carried on the top deck as manufacturers dont want them in the salt air....jr has owned a lot of flash cars in his working career including those starting with the letters r and j.....and we often wander around looking at the few exotic second hand ones up there and he points out a lot of the features that are beyond mere mortals like me....robin mills would love these walks.....one of the ones he pointed out is an x series jag....looks good but avoid them like the plague says he....had them for company cars and they are crap....
if you are going to ship a car anywhere and it has hub caps as against mags....take the hub caps off and put in the boot as they prise each cap on one side as they attach tie downs to all 4 wheels and a lot of them get broken.....also stick thick rubber pads on drivers doors as cars are extremely close to each other and new cars have a factory rubber block fitted as described..........ferraris , maseratis etc come on their own pellets and are wrapped in protective film and taken on board by their own company people at port of departure
only one other passenger joined at salerno (there were meant to be 3 but guess other two couldnt wait)....he is "two- meter-peter" an englishman who also lives in cypress .he is over 2 meters high so his knickname was a given....he had been back in england for family reasons and has had a motor bike sitting in a shed back there for several years and decided to ride it home to cypress but only took it as far as salerno as it is difficult to go all the way to cypress without going through turkey and if you come from the greek side of cypress as against the turkish side then you cant go to turkey as they hate you and wont let you in...strange as that may seem to some of you..tomorrow we will be in greece and then .we will call in turkey but then we have to sail past cypress and onto isreal before heading back to cypress as the greek cypriots wont let us dock if we have come straight from turkey....we have to go via isreal to sort of cleanse the ship..she is a funny old world.....there are quite a lot of cars for cypress so hope to see bit of it while we are there.....there is a dmz dividing the two cypresses which is patroled by the un(kiwi army has done time there).....in the middle of it is a ghost city....completely empty as residents had only hours to evacuate when turkey invaded and now this city is just rotting away..(called phonetically "farma-goosta")...jr says there are building sites with high-rise cranes on them....still with skips of rock hard concrete swining from them ...
...we took on a lot of fruit and veg in salerno so kates prediction of immenent scurvy probably wont come true
sat 12 may
yesterday we edged around the tip of greece and arrived into piraeus about 8.30...we all went on bridge to watch....greek pilot (who was late)very excitible and lots of quick-fire instructions....woodie on bridge at these times also..(now adays he is resplendent in tropical uniform which is white shirt and white shorts.... the white is very white)..pilot calls headings out....woodie repeats them and philly on the helm repeats them again when he has done it....getting into our berth was tight and they are super gentle with the old girl as 52,000 tonne is not something you can stop in a hurry if you get it wrong
...footnote on the bridge ...this bridge runs the full width of the ship..33 meters..slightly wider in fact so that you can see down the sides....the "bridge wings" are all included whereas in a lot of other ships the wings are open to the air and have doors into the actual bridge.....all that is in the wings are the consuls on each side for controlling the bow thrusters and stern thrusters as well which are side on propellers in the bow and stern so you can move the ship sideways without a tug....also in each wing is a gyro compass....from each wing into the middle of bridge is about 30feet of nothing .....in the center of the bridge is the control consul....which has a chart table on the left....two radar screens in front (normal tv type screens...none of those old things with rubber shrouds around them any more) and a ECDIS screen (electronic chart display information system).....if you install two ecdis units by law you dont need to carry paper charts at all......the helm is just a little bigger than a bread and butter plate and the engine room telegraph now looks more like the shift in an automatic car....the whole thing is of course on auto pilot unless we are under pilot.....woodie normally operates the bow thrusters himself when we are docking....at sea.if we make a course change while steaming at full speed , the deck officers adjusts a knob on the auto pilot which is about the size of the top off a coke bottle and he does it in little stages over a few minutes so you dont really feel much.....jessie says with much hilarity that if he did it in one hit she would heel over and spill woodies coffee.....would do more than that as nothing in mess is bolted down and tables are preset with all course dishes on top of each other so there would be a lot of crockery to clean up....the cars would be ok as they are well stropped down.....at the back of the bridge are two sort of open offices wth faxes and computers in them and the rest of the bridge is empty space and all kept immaculately clean....the whole area would be big enough for a 10 pin bowling lane or a small bore rifle range....at night bridge is kept in total darkness so that watchkeepers dont loose their night vision.....one of the radars shows long distance the other close up ....all ships around you are shown plus the course they are on so you can work out whether you are likely to hit them or not....this info transferes to ecdis and you have only to position mouse over ship and it tells you who they are ,where come from and where going unless they are grey boats in which case they simply have a nato callsign as officially all of the med is under united nations control
....if i havnt by now bored you completely to death you can search marinetraffic.com and punch in grande ellade or any other ships name on the planet for that matter and you can track where we are live....these boys are continually checking the course etc so its got me stuffed how your favourite ship the rena ended up on that reef.. ..incidentally two of her sister ships were unloading beside us last night....and during the day we passed one of the costa line cruise ships fortunately at a wide berth (we will be seeing the concordia in her natural state in a couple of weeks on our way back)....very hazy last two days sort of like sea fog and ships popping out of it here there and everywhere but no probs as you can see them on radar 30kms away
.....anyway it seems that we are fated to arrive in ports at night and was 10.00 before we got ashore last night.....dock very tidy and usual 100acres of cars neatly lined up....we got a taxi....by good fortune 2 meter is fluent in greek and we got to a good part of town for stuff all (under nz $16equiv.) which pretty good as took ages...we ended up at a marina...every greek tycoon must have had his yacht tied up there and was a good paradox for what is happening there.....our bar very litely populated but took waitress 30 minutes per drink....was told that its the greek way...i think she was on a special go slow to reflect their economy....we wanted greek beer ...apparently they dont have any at least not there....that the problem say taxi driver...."greek not produce anything...we justa spend"....tax evasion is a national sport and civil servants get huge pensions, made bigger by the fact that they get promotions just before they retire at about 55 which puts them into a higher bracket and to make it worse ...if they have held more than one job in their govt employed lives then they get a pension for each one....they are in the shit make no mistake about that.....
piraeus is a big smoke....i thought we were actually in athens but apparently that is 9 km over the hill...we had to be back on ship by 1.0am and wont be back to greece which is a pity but not too worried as the whole purpose of this trip was to geta feel for these places with a view to in depth look next time........town not as tidy and picturesque as salerno .....one thing that stood out was dozens of wandering dogs ....busy intersections with dogs wandering across them willy nilly....at the marina they were amusing them selves by chasing cars up and down the street....didnt see any get skittled but they wouldnt last long at dobbie farms thats for sure !!
...back at port with minutes to spare before 1.00 and ellade towering over the port like a great white iceberg.....you soon get attached to a ship and is like seeing home .....a familiar haven in a strange land....we were careful to get back on by 1.00am sharp as woody had issued our shore -leave passes himself and we didnt want to rock the boat....she sailed 3.30am while we were nigh-nighs
....unlike a bulk carrier or container ship , the crew dont get any shore leave ...they are all flat out on cargo.....they work av 8hr days 7 days a week.....officers do 6mths contract at a time .....ship plods on 365 days a year except for a drydock 2mnths every 2 years....she is a 2001 model and the 22,000 hp in her bum end has pushed her over a lot of miles since then
....italians can go to nautical school for 5 years and become junior officers...philippenos have to start as mess-man and then ninja and every other facit of the job before training to be officers so they are well into their 40s before make masters
writing this on the 12th and we are currently cruising through the greek islands and will be in izmur turkey in a couple of hours.....hot and hazy.....mayebe will get ashore in daylight and find internet cafe....rh
sun may 13 turkey
holy moses i'm trying to keep this blog short and to the point but its shaping up to be like the magnacarta....and still no sign of an internet cafe
...yesterday afternoon we nudged into the port of izmir about 5.00 pm ...it looks to be a 7digit population size vast amount of multi-story apartment blocks...talk about "liitle boxes on the hillside"!!..was only on deck watching for about half an hour and face as red as beetroot from sun....we took on a turkish pilot and he looked just like a turkish pilot....woodie had chabal on the bow thrusters and he conducted like he was in charge of the italian philharmonic....he likes his hand movements but he is very good at it and it was not possible to feel the ship coming in contact with the wharf as he is so gentle....like parking a 52000 tonne feather (not like the interisland ferry jocks that hit so hard they nearly throw you over the side)
...well by the time we get all that done we have had dinner and get shore passes issued which are a bit more formal.(although no-one looked at them ).2 meter was staying on ship to watch some of our movies... he looks british...has a strong middle england accent , played no8 for north wales but his last name compliments of his father is greek cypriot and as i said before they are essentially in a state of war with turkey....
....i not wearing my aussie akubra as the last thing i want to look like as we approach the middle east is an american!!!but jr didnt get to be a mover and shaker in the british meat industry by being a wus like me and hes got on the big white snakeskin banded stetson again complete with denim shirt and black leather waistcoat....best way to descibe him is to google lee marvin and look at him in some of his gunfighter roles...it was shaping up to be an "interesting" night..we slog off on foot but get picked up after a while by a turkish mini van.(at least it was a van....in greece last night the port van turned out to be a fiat bambino and it was hilarious getting four of us plus driver aboard esp two-and-a-half-meter-peter)...no english at all...takes us to dock gates....we do get rough directions from the guy on the gate and a short walk and we are on the esplanade which runs right along the beach which is a continuation of the harbour which looks like where all the entertainment is and is not too seedy looking....and reasonably quiiet...jr's stetson is working wonders...people are parting from our path like the waves of the dead sea.....all smiles and lots of hellos from those who have any knowledge of the english language.....we decide we will try the first outside bar we come to(all the bars are like those in octagon ie half in side, other half out on pavement) and see if we can find an english speaking barman who can ring up and try to get us a city tour while it is still light..as we are trying not too just do a "sailers" visit to every port we get to..first bar is crowded with people watching some soccer game....next bar empty as no tv....barman and two waitresses not much english...get owner ...fairly good english but says wouldnt get a tour until 9.0am tomorrow...bar only sells one type of beer and no spirits but no surprise as it is a muslim country albiet a secular one..we soon find out why no tour tonight...(no good for us tomorow though.)...however what happened next was better than 10 city tours......there was a lot of noise coming from bars along pavement where they watching soccer and i am on record as saying at that point in time " i hope the home team wins !! "
...well the game finished and there was a lot of cheering so obvviously the popular team did win...(in actual fact we found out much later that it was the turkish cup and neither was even the home team...both were from istanbul ).what happened next is hard to describe....it couldnt have been any more dramatic if chabal had shown up and fired 100 rope throwers down that esplanade....the whole show sort of exploded....the turks went absolutely crazy....withinn minutes the street was full of cars doing victory laps mixed with people on foot....all had hazard lights going and horns on ...foot people were setting off roadside hazard flares...fireworks..anything they could find....some ships docked out in bay (which were nearly all turkish navy) were sending up distress flares as well....probably because no naval issue fireworks....and the situation kept building....by now there were cars coming down the footpaths as street was getting gridlocked...they were all hanging out of cars in some way all waving flags..either sitting on open windows with bodies outside or standing with heads out through sun roof and it is astonishing how many turks can fit through a sunroof at the same time..turks are big on flags....also a lot had a bottle of turkish beer in the non-flag hand (including drivers) but i dont think any of them were actually drinking it ..they were too busy running on a brew called passion....welcome to muslim turkey.....most were young and must have all been familiar with the song "girls(and guys)just want to have fun" ....by about 11.00 you would swear they had transported the mardi-gra from rio to izmur...(i have been to many home wins at carisbrook but they were like church services afterwards compared to what we were seeing!!.)..more and more people packing in and this was going on for kilometers down the esplanade....the whole population of izmir must have been trying to get down that street....car loads now of families with little kids (no seat resraints in izmir) and those vehicles without sunroofs or convertible now have people on roofs and open boots full as well( i should add that there is a lot of junk on the roads there and a lot of the cars should have been in the undi $500....however the malee near us was by now joined by a big flash turkish tour bus....eventually the traffic went from a crawl to complete deadlock....the turks were going to town well and truley....our barman was a big serious guy who was trying to be professional but he just couldnt keep his manure together and kept throwing himself on the ground and waving his arms to the sky.....the two wiatresses also couldn't keep it in and they kept grabbing their flags running outside and throwing themselves into the fray....then they would sort of calm down and come back to try and do some work but it got the better of them and 5 minutes later they were at it again.....add to this lots two man units....one with a big base drum and the other with a sort of flute which is about 150db and sounds like those awful bloody things the south africans blow at the rugby.....and of course all car horns locked on it was bloody deafening...kate accumulating red roses compliments of jr as is only way to get rid of flower sellers in europe and jr only one with turkish change as me euro..muslim turkey looking better by the minute most bars also provide hukas(water pipes) and lot of younguns sucking on those....more smoke around than the fog macine on ellade can make even !!
we had to get a brake from this for the sake of the ears so we shifted to an indoor bar that didnt have many people as the street was the place to be....however they did have a turkish band....bloody weird music though....the backers were playing sortof belly-dancing/snake charming music and the rod stewart look alike was endeavouring to sing to it....he was aided by a female off-sider..(another interesting side of muslim turkey)...she was a tall girl and couldnt sing to save herself but she had other attributes and they must have spent a great deal of time pre-show sowing her attributes into her cossie and it was pretty tight....jr and i were convinced it was only a matter of minutes before the stitching let go and she shot out of it....no burkas in this part of izmir thats for sure....kate was giving the two of us a good-natured ear bashing as "non-meat" people dont appreciate the complexities of grading on the hoof and the importance of confirmation and the ins and outs of whether a heifer can grade p1 when most are p2.....suffice it to say we had to leave that bar for the sake of our own health
...we came to the next bar and believe me they are only a short distance apart....they sold turkish brandy as well and jr is partial to a quiet one or two of those and i thought i could be good for one as well......it was high octane and smelt very similar to the closed in car decks on the grande ellade....sort of a burnt hydaulic oil smell....we settled back to watch the entertainment as i reckon if i make it to the one 00 i'll not see anything like that again......then the inevitable happened....the call of the bladder.....and any half savy person in foreign wateringholes knows or should know....that going to the dunny is the most dangerous thing you are likely to do on your night out......no need to worry about going in twos to our one though....the friendly bouncer lounging outside dunny door had a very visible "peace-maker" holstered on his hip.....you can have a very relaxed pee when the man outside the door is "packing heat"....thats for sure.....but it did alert us to the possible situation we would have found ourselvees in if the wrong team had won....
(..by this stage i was pondering on whether the ancestors of these people had the same sort of temperament ...as the dardonelles are only a hop skip and a jump above here and a little aside came to me while i sat pondering this.....back in england , julia's horse was due for its tetanus shot and it is very expensive to get a vet out so we put horse in float and hauled it over to crowborough to the vet clinic....while waiting we explored the second -hand shop next door....i parted with a well spent 3 quid on a very old postcard....it is a black and white picture of a rough scrubby hillside ...theres a bit of a watercourse running down it....someone has marked an x on the skyline.....at the bottom is printed SHRAPNEL GULLY AT GALLIPOLI 1915....on the back faded ink and flowery script of the time it says "the spot marked by a cross,was where I was knocked over by a Shell,when I got up,felt myself to see no parts were missing. Take care of these!"....unfortunately no name or address so must have been one of a group of cards sent home together but there is a fair chance it was written by an ANZAC soldier)
...eventually and reluctantly we had to go "home".....i staggered both kate and jr by guiding us through the maze of highly stacked containers right to the ship just before 2.00am when our leave expired ....cars still flying off and you have to be careful you dont get skittled as they tend to come off in batches and sometimes they fan out and come blatting down the dock 4 or 5 wide....i guess they have seen the movie "the italian job"!!
...2nd mate jessie and his ninjas directing unloading...they are grinning from ear to ear at our appearance and we get handshakes and high 5s....they seem genuinely pleased that we have survived turkey in one piece....they must think we are indolent tossers though as we go straight to bed and when we get up for breakfast , they have just finished working , cast off and we are full ahead out of izmir and lining up for isreal in two days time.....and to make it look all the worse we go back to bed after brecky and get a bit more shut-eye before lunch.....a hard life indeed..rh
wed 16 may
yesterday i neither saw the approaches into israel or the departure either.....when we got up at 6.0am to see the approach we were just along side..ashdod is just above gaza..got ready for off and by 7.00am we are summonsed down to one of ships offices....israeli security....quite a pleasant guy asking questions but a real goorey looking spook(complete with skull cap ) standing behind him who was watching very carefully how we answered each question....they wanted to know everything....firstly what is the origins of my second name....explained hamish is the gaelic and not the arabic and then why are we on a cargo boat ..do you have any guns or other weapons...why are we coming to israel (pretty bloody obvious i would have thought and only way to avoid it would have been to wait in lifeboat outside 100mile limit )...why we want to go to jerusalem..do we know anybody in israel..do we have any kids etc etc etc....all the time he is continually leafing thru our passports and i swear he was going to wear it out....woody was sitting with us and he said after that this is what happens every 5 weeks when they come to this port....even the crew get the once over even if not going ashore as ashdod is a closed port and you are deemed to be in israel as soon as you sail in....then we got finger printed and photographed....finally we got breakfast and were ready for off ....but bugger me if we are not all sommonsed back to meeting room.....now two women from israeli immigration and its back over the same story again and again...(incidentally jr and 2 meter got an even bigger interrigation as they are both english who live in cypress and why have they come to israel on way.etc etc..(ive explained above why we have to sail past cypress and go there on way back but israeli's quite suspicious about that.)..............finally again.....we are on wharf just after 9.00am....woody has got shipping agent to jack us up with a taxi for the day to go to jerusalem.....driver is a very solid guy called eyal....he speaks good english with that sort of yankee accent that israeli's seem to have...he is pretty friendly and casual but..2 meter reckons he is bound to be a part time spook.....well bugger me we head off as far as port gates where we have to go thru security again....no one else there but we have to sit there for about 40 minutes while woman behind counter looks at the wall.....i guess she is waiting on what her search engine comes up with on rh and kate mccallum not to forget jr(complete in same gear as turkey) and the giant two meter......now you can see why i changed my facebook page.....my original photo was taken at a publicity shoot for the stage play allo allo which i was in and when i joined facebook it was the only portrait of myself i could find but i realised that being photographed wearing a nazi generals uniform would go down like a bucket of cold sick in israel and i am sure they would have found it too if i had left it)...........any way finally again we are off to jeruselem at 10.15am....(over 4 hrs lost since got up)....is a 1 hr drive due east of ashdod.rolling countryside ....lot of hort. crops and although early spring they are heading barley.....
.....not going to tell you what we did in jerusalem....you can get the bible out after tea and have a read of that ......apart from where he was born (we didnt go to bethlehem ....it is further north and you have to change cars as is in palastinian territory and cant take israeli vehicle that has been to jerusalem on same trip)) we covered just about all of the career of j.c.....he is bigger than elvis in those parts that is for sure and the ironic thing about it is that those making most of their livings from the huge tourist market centered around him and to a lesser extent his mother.....are israeli and palistineans who do not have him featuring in their own religions although you wouldnt know it to hear them...
a lot of the action is in the old city....and of course it is all symbolic as none of the actual buildings where things supposidly played out , were actually standing in the year 1 ....most having been rebuilt after demolition in the crusades etc , not to forget the 6 day war in 1967 which did a lot of damage....it is a rabbit warren esp the route up thru the city to the church of the holy sepulchr which is on the supposed site where the crucifiction took place....the place is heaving jews , palistineans(2 mill of those actually live in israel) coptic christians , armenians etc etc you name it....there are people from all over the world crammed in there.....the old city is divided into 4 quarters and there are 7 gates to enter by...(.outside the one we enter is a mossaic with a center stone that the jews claim to be the "center of the earth" ) to get into the jewish section where the wailing wall is , you have to (you guessed it) go thru security again....in that area there are more m16 machine pistols per square meter than cobble stones........already i have worked out what you all probably know....this part of the world is very very complex esp jerusalem....as this is already the capital city for the jews(i thought it was tel-aviv but apparently they shifted it) and of course the palistineans want it for their capital city as well if they ever do get their own state.....and i thought northern ireland was complex....nothing on this....but it was extremely surreal to be walking thru areas which were hammered into my brain as a kid growing up in the bible-belt of south otago(what i could remember of it....bit hazy in parts) my mother would have done cartwheels if she had had the chance to do that and i popped a couple of $ into the box at the gardens of gethsemini for her for good luck and i also poked a bit of grande ellade table napkin into a crack on the wailing wall on which i had put a request for a lotto win....
eyal is a secular jew...ie he obeys jewish tradition if it suits him..he cant stand the current govt and he hates orthodox jews with a passion...(.they are bludgers who avoid military service...dont work and pray all day when they are not dealing diamonds he says)....he is hard to get certain info out of him ....he ignored me if i asked anything sensitive eg palistinians/security and things military (i did torture out of him that he is a first sargent in the marines but on reserve ie he only has to do 2 weeks a year having done his 3 years stint)....at other times he burst out laughing and said to the other 3...." your friend here ask many questions...i think he maybe work for mossad...haa haa"....finally we are back in ashdod and get stuffed around again by israeli security when we go to get into port..eyal having another cackle "they taking the time because probably copy your passport....mossad prefer new zealand passport haa haa"........he is a one-man comedy show,israel's answere to flight-of-the-concords!!...he takes us to a duty free shop which unlike the rest of israel....is very cheap (eyal says there are more big mass protests about the cost of living coming up).....sometime in the early hours of tthis morning we sailed
all in all that will do me for israel and i'm pleased that we went and at no time did we feel in the slightest bit spooked or intimidated but we four are all agreed....if we come back here again on one of these trips then we will stay on the ship and read a book
today we are only a couple of houra out of cypress but no chance of internet cafe as probably no shore leave ....tunraround could be only 2 or 3 hours rh
thur 17 may
well we did indeed arrive in limassol cyprus last night and alas jr and 2meter rode off into the sunset on their respective steeds(jr getting in trouble with port union for driving his own vehicle off) and they would have been home for tea before we sailed..bit of a bugger that they weren,t doing the full trip as we did have a lot of laughs....we were joined by an aussie who has been riding his trailbike around the world in various stages and is getting off at salerno on way back...another quick turnaround for us and woody not giving out shore leave although he said it was ok to wander around the port which we did and watched a bit of cargo handling onto and off various vessels....man it is higgelty-pigelty and you have to wonder how often they get it wrong ....sailed 10.30
thur17 cont
woody leaving us in salerno so put on his farewell grill today....started about 1.00pm...(first thing he did was take off his epelletes and present them to chabal with much ceremony ,presumably to indicate he in charge until new master arrives)...kicked off with a large pot of punch which he had concocted and he insisted on serving the lunch to us three remaining passengers himself....then there was toasts and much hilarity and of course the lemon chello came out at desert time and after festivities wound down , woodie brought the surviving 2 bottles lemonchello over and left it on our table so we put on a bit of music and soon it was dinner( malcolm "jr " longley will be gutted to read this as he developed quite a taste for that stuff)
fri 18 may
.....dont know if all that frivolity yesterday arvo was a good idea as during night for the first time in the voyage we ran into a heavy sea....big swell coming straight at us and the old girl was pitching a fair bit as we are light on with only 250 units of cargo left.. every so many swells is a bigger one and front portion of hull rides a bit clear and comes down with a mighty plonk and vibrations run right through ship....and to make it worse it was blowing a gale out on deck and cold....some of the wavetops exploding to white water and coming past at deck11 hieght as we ploughed into it...fulcrum point in ship tends to be about where mess is so not too bad there....cabins too far forward so not good there and you would have been insane to go right down the stern as it was rising and falling about 20 meters each time and i reckon wind would have blown you cleanoff when she was dropping.....passed the afternoon watching movies in mess as i get car-sick at home if am trying to read in car and kate doing a bit of rough driving so thought it best not to push my luck out here with the book today....
sat 19th
sometime during early hours sea fell off(24 hours of that at a time is plenty thanks ) and up this morning to see that we are lining up for straits of messino and sea is dead flat again,sun is out and all is well...back up to salerno tonight