Day 23 - Wednesday, April 23 2008 Sadly, our great voyage of discovery nears an end and this will be my last shipboard bulletin. We enter Singapore waters tonight and expect to pick up the Port Kelang pilot at 0430. That should mean berthing about 0600, and by the time the usual shoreside formalities are dealt with, we should be down the Tosca gangway for the last time about two hours later (after a final breakfast, of course). Correction: the last time on this voyage. There will be more. Our not-so-slow boat to China will have covered almost 10,000 miles since [View Full Entry]

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Day 22 - Tuesday, April 22 2008 Mon capitaine reports that we’re now only running a day late and we’ll hit Port Kelang on Thursday. There was a chance that we’d miss the flight back from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai, and we’d just have to stay on board to Southampton. I suppose there could be worse fates. Only hope for Southampon now is that one of the dragon-chasing fishing boats won’t make it and we have to go about and rescue them, then divert to Manila. At least that would be good luck for some of us. You’ll gather from this [View Full Entry]

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Day 21 - Monday, April 21 2008 Disaster struck as went left Yantian. A small ski-boat came scudding from the blind side of the V-shaped quay just as our stern tug was revving to push us off. The ski-boat capsized in the tug’s backwash and the two occupants disappeared in the whirlpool - swept under the pier at best; at worst into the tug’s screws. Consternation on the bridge, but the benefit of emergency drills was immediately evident. Two dinghies were launched from the tug almost instantly, one retrieving the upturned ski-boat while the other searched for the occupant [View Full Entry]

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Day 20 - Sunday, April 20 2008 Classical music devotees will be familiar with the Peer Gynt Suite and the ‘dawn’ passage which follows the tempest. All calm, serenity, and relief after the rollicking storm that came before. True, Tosca is Verdi and not Grieg, but if we can be allowed a bit of musical borrowing, Grieg’s work would be very appropriate today. Typhoon Neoguri blew herself/himself out through the night and we are now riding peacefully outside Yantian, with not a hint of the fury that prevailed yesterday. The skies are clearing and watery sunshine is beginni [View Full Entry]

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Day 19 - Saturday, April 19 2008 Typhoon Neoguri is upon us. Our scheduled 0900 departure from Kowloon was delayed until almost 1300, a combination of last night’s late entry and the unwelcoming conditions outside the harbour. Heavy rain lashed down all morning and we nosed our way into the channel and the open sea in very limited visibility. A set of eight giant wipers clean the bridge windows, same principle as with a car windscreen but on a much bigger scale, but could still barely cope with the torrential downpour. The pilot and the skipper chose to direct operations from [View Full Entry]

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Day 18 - Friday, April 18 2008 Two days at sea are giving a chance to relax after all the hectic shore-hopping. Great potential there for a Spoonerism, and more opportunities will probably arise when we hit the fleshpots of Hong Kong this evening. Meantime, all we have to do is lie back and enjoy the gradually warmer temperatures and a very smooth run. After the net cargo gain in Tianjin and Shanghai, we’re riding lower in the water and that seems to help muffle the throb of the engines and flatten the swells. Our cabin is also a wee bit [View Full Entry]

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Day 17 - Thursday, April 17 2008 We cleared Shanghai at around 0400 and now have two days at sea before hitting Hong Kong tomorrow evening, this time docking in the more amenable Kowloon area rather than the container city of Chiwan that we visited on the outbound run. We’re slipping very easily back into the rhythm of shipboard life - eat, sleep, occasional forays on deck and to the bridge, and pointing the binoculars at anything that catches our interest. Bird life has been a bit sparse, but yesterday we were visited by a not readily identifiable specimen that took [View Full Entry]

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Day 16 - Wednesday, April 16 2008 We were off Shanghai about 0500 this morning, but decided to stay abed for docking as rain and mist looked like messing up any prospect of new visual delights. Good decision, as we were still in the same position on rousing for breakfast at 0730. The weather delay meant we were not alongside until about 1030, so our shoreside trip is postponed for a few hours when all the customs, quarantine, immigration, and shore pass processing will be out of the way. The container terminal is about a 90 minute drive from the city [View Full Entry]

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Day 15 - Tuesday, April 15 2008 Navigation is easier in daytime, and the light thrown off by a city the size of Beijing makes celestial observation well-nigh impossible. That’s the only explanation for the England football fans’ failure to find their mark last night. Especially as they were so close. The Forbidden City was down the road a wee bit and the sought-after hotel just a block away. Still, I hadn’t been consulted at the time so it seemed hardly fair now to say ‘I could have told you so!’ Better to help than to criticise, so I offered to [View Full Entry]

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Day 14 - Monday, April 14 2008 FORBIDDEN CITY, Beijing, 1030: The dateline is not as expected but at least it defused a potential boxing match. Maybe that was due to visiting the Hall of Domestic Harmony and the Hall of Mental Tranquility. It certainly marked a reasonably auspicious ending to a trip that began with high hopes but deteriorated to fiasco levels along the way. The ship’s agent had obtained seamen’s shore passes for us, the Chiwan passport stamps were still good for Beijing, no unforeseen problems lurking, so all systems go. While filling in the requisite forms, [View Full Entry]

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