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Published: November 30th 2007
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It’s good to be back at sea again. Callisto is currently 40 miles south of Crete motoring along at a steady 12 knots towards Port Said, the harbour which marks the northern entrance to the Suez Canal.
We left Antibes four days ago after waiting 48 hours for a weather window to open south of Sicily. It’s been a very good passage so far, only 24 hours of slightly bumpy weather yesterday interrupting the excellent conditions.
It’s getting warmer and brighter with every watch which is quite a relief as France was starting to get a little too chilly for my meagre, mainly summer wardrobe to cope with.
I joined Callisto about six weeks ago in Marseilles’ Nautech shipyard, adjacent to the ferry terminal which in years past was the gateway to France for countless shiploads of immigrants. It was a run down area with high crime and lots of dark corners, taxi’s were definitely the way forward for getting into town. Marseilles’ old town is fantastic, loads of sporadically lit café’s and bars spilling out amongst the pedestrians from under their canopies in the side streets and alleyways. The food was pretty good. Refreshingly French, which might sound odd
but it’s only apparent how anglicised the food around the Cote d’Azur is once you get away from it.
I arrived towards the end of the yard period and quickly had to get stuck in learning the boat, the crew and the shipyard workers. It was made doubly difficult to get into the swing of things as we had no chief mate, no bosun and only one deckhand on board. Then the deckhand buggered his knee and was cabin-bound for a couple of weeks which made me the entire deck department. Not the best start to a new job but also not a lot I could do about it.
The boat was a bit daunting at first, for a start it’s huge, much bigger than any yacht I’ve worked on before with a four man deck crew which I have to look after. Plus it’s a Feadship which is to yachts what Bentley/Rolls Royce is to motoring so looking after it is quite a job. You have to use very specific products in very specific ways, one for the paint, one for the teak, one for the glass etc etc.
One of my main jobs as second mate
is to be responsible for the yachts two tenders. They are a 28 foot Chris Craft from the US of A and a 28 foot Vaudrey Miller built in good old NZ. They are nice boats and pretty slippery (60 odd knots from the VM) but a proper pain in the ass as they get minging very quickly, especially when the engineers get hold of them to fix something. (Think grease marks all over the leather upholstery) They also have to fit inside the garages just forward of the bridge which is a hassle as there is no more than a four or five centimetres clearance in any direction when they are being lifted in or out. Not too much of a problem when in a nice stable marina but at anchor with a bit of a chop it can be hairy.
Eventually everything was as done as the shipyard was going to make it. We left Marseilles a few weeks ago and went to Antibes to get things tidied up and make ready for the passage to the Maldives. There is an awful lot of crap, (Compulsory Recreation Assistance Products) on board which need to be stowed every
time we go to sea. For instance we have to have one huge locker dedicated to all the inflatable tow-toys the owner insists on having but never uses which have to be pulled out, sorted and put back in again every time he comes on board
With that little moan out of the way I have to admit that it’s much worse for the stewardesses inside, they have to carefully stow all of the crockery, art work and expensive little knick-knacks without breaking them, whereas we can usually get away with lashing stuff down with bungee cord. Bungee cord is great as it’s usually well inside the sphere of understanding of the average member of the deck department.
With the yacht stowed for sea we had only to await the gap in the weather to present itself and we were off. It’s funny how while in port, the itchy feet start playing up and the entire crew is bursting to get to sea, yet once out of sight of land they can’t stop moaning about how boring it is. Maybe it’s just me but I find watchkeeping at sea really dull. Sure it’s nice to be bobbing about watching
a nice sunset or dolphins playing under the bow but these things are usually over pretty quick. Eight hours a day on the bridge mostly spent looking at a blank radar screen tends to drive me up the bulkhead a bit. Give me traffic! Give me coastal navigation! Anything which requires a bit of concentration would do.
As luck would have it I was the sole benefactor amongst the deck officers of the only two pieces of interesting navigation in the entire passage to Suez; the transits of the Bonifacio straits between Corsica and Sardinia and the Messina straits which separate Sicily from the toe of Italy’s mainland boot.
The Messina straits were particularly interesting. They are the straits of Greek mythology which are home to the six headed Hydra on the eastern side and the ship killing whirlpool on the west. The Hydra must have been out for the evening as I didn’t hear from her but the whirlpools are real enough. Not big enough these days to really bother anything other than a very small boat, but they can make you twist about a bit if you sail through a big one.
Normally ships take a pilot through
the straits but we are beneath the tonnage threshold which requires it. It was interesting navigation, dodging ferries and overtaking other ships certainly made the four hour watch go quickly.
Having now passed Crete and successfully made it to Port Said we are about halfway down the canal, anchored in the Great Bitter Lake with the rest of today’s 30 strong southbound convoy. The northbound convoy are passing us as I type and as soon as they are all past we will weigh anchor and continue on towards Port Suez.
We left Port Said in the early morning after embarking the pilot, the agent and the linesman. The agent is arguably the more important of the three as it is he who advises the captain on the correct level of ‘tips’ to be handed out to the various officials who descend upon the vessel. They do actually bring official papers to be signed and adorned with the ships stamp but it’s the Marlboro man who decides whether your vessel is approved or not.
Even the crew of the pilot boat expect cancer sticks from you, even if only a packet each. And they can be pretty persistent,
their little ships horns tooting away until you give them what they want. I guess they see the yachts as easy targets as they probably have a fair bit more freedom in doling out presents than the average commercial vessel.
We should be out of the canal and anchored in Suez bay by midnight, where we will wait for the bunker barge to come alongside and fuel us for the next leg to Salalah in Oman. We tried to bunker yesterday in Port Said but surprisingly enough they didn’t have the right connection to mate with our standard international fuel manifold.
Such is life beyond Europe, I guess you can’t expect everything to be straightforward. Where’s the fun in that?
I think the whole situation was best summed up when, with tempers getting a little stretched, one South African crew member turned and said to me; ‘Hey man don’t sweat it, welcome to Africa!’
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