First things. I have arrived safely in Singapore and am making myself comfortable in Little India at a nice little backpackers that I can recommend to anyone coming to Singapore. No sea sickness, some non-motion sickness since I arrived on shore, and struggling to get used to the humidity, particularly with my propensity to faint! Otherwise all is good. I give you this intro because the rest of the email is quite long and you might want to allocate some time to read it.
Now for the details.
I managed to get on my boat the MV Theodor Storm without any difficulties (on the afternoon of the 28th of December) and also managed to get off, get on, get off (to pick up my toiletries bag which I left behind) and get back on. Then I waited it out till 1 o'clock in the morning when we finally left. We were supposed to leave at 9pm however the Wharfies didn't seem in any kind of rush to fill up the boat, so it took longer than expected. I woke up and watched the departure from Deck 'D' which was my home for the ten days.
The departure and sailing out of botany bay was not that exciting cause it was the middle of the night and I couldn't see much, but still it was nice to finally get moving! With the safe assurance that the boat passed the south head in a southerly direction, I said my goodbyes to Australia with a few SMS's and with two motion sickness pills in my stomach, I went to bed. I woke up the next morning, arrived a little late for breakfast and received some advice from the messman as to the best time to eat, so I would eat with the crew, which I rigidly stuck for the ten days in the way that only I can. After breakfast I stepped outside of the port (left) side of the ship and saw land passing me by in the distance. It was calm the sea had a light swell and air was warm however something seemed a little odd. If land was on the port side, either I was looking at Tasmania or New Zealand. One, too far South, the other too far East (and why would you anyway) for us to travel in the one night. Come to think of it the sun had apparently risen in the west that morning? It clicked that something wasn't right and I spoke to the 3rd Officer. Indeed we were not heading South to Melbourne, we were heading North to Brisbane. The delays caused by the Christmas period had put the vessel so far out of schedule that they canceled the trip to Melbourne and Perth and would head straight back to Singapore to try and catch up with the next cycle. This meant a shorter trip, travelling pass the great barrier reef and the possibility of seeing a volcano (which didn't work very well at night!)
The days following were fairly uneventful, lots of ocean, lots of reading and few movies (10 or so) and plenty of scenery, particularly along the coast from Cairns north.
Of course reaching Fraser Island the weather did turn pretty bad and the ship was rolling 20 degrees each way (At that amount your better off sleeping against an wall or on the floor). You would think that we might have lost a few containers. But I don't know how the lashings work but those containers were rock solid. Not even bumping into each other let alone falling off. That night it was confirmed that I don't have much of an issue with motion sickness as I passed through the whole trip with taking any more tablets. The rest of the time the weather and seas varied from overcast to isolated showers and the swell went from from to 1 to 2 metres. I got two maybe three goos sun sets but generally it was better to sit indoors. One thing about those big freighter ships is that there is little nuance on the open ocean in the way they travel. You just set the speed to maximum, set the direction and just plow through whatever comes your way and if the boat rocks, turn and pivots, you just let it rock, turn and pivot.
Everyday; two or three times a day I would go up to the navigation deck. Check the charts, the Radar and speed and make sure that we were traveling in the right direction. Of course we got a pilot on board to navigate the tricky bits (Great Barrier Reef) but generally the crew were up to the task. It was fun talking to the crew and in particular the Third Officer who I managed to talk to about some of the finer points of a maritime career. How does 7 months work, 4 months holiday sound to you. For Captains it is 4 months work, 4 months holiday! Wouldn't mind some of that would you!
Anyway, back to the trip. The most exciting part of the trip would have to be the arrival in Singapore which of course means passing through part of the Malacca Straights. For those not in the know, the Malacca Straight is one of the key route of international trade, connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans. So I was expecting some ships and activity. Due to our birth not being available until after 22:30 we waited at the entrance to the Malacca Straights (MS) at which point there were a few vessels visible on the horizon. However at the time when we entered the harbour a stream of lights lit up the horizon. Silly me! I thought that it was a few vessels and the rest of the lights were the cities on land. But no! Looking on the radar, it was covered in little yellow blobs, three time longer than they are wide. These were all ship and the stream of lights continues for the whole 2 - 3 hours that took to get to Singapore harbour. I couldn't seem them for real but looking at the lights and the blob on the radar we must have passed hundreds of ships, and I don't mean 30ft yachts. Most of these were between 100 and 300 metre long commercial freighters (Just as a note, the largest commercial vessels in the world are over 300m long and carry 300,000 metric tonnes of goods and have a draft of 20 metres (Depth of the ship below sea level)). Some were active and moving goods but many were waiting offshore. The area to the east of Singapore is a international holding ground where ships from around the world are allowed to anchor while waiting for, whatever?
This is were I really came to realise that freighter shipping and key hubs like the Malacca Straights are the engine that drives and enables a global economy. The scale was beyond anything that I could imagine, it makes airports feel insignificant. So sailing onto Singapore is like receiving a royal entry as you travel through the clearway in the middle and saluted by the myriad of ships on either side of you.
The actual berthing in Singapore is also impressive. Again a specialist pilot is brought on board to navigate into the port. Now those of you who saw me of at the port in Botany Bay, imagine something at least ten times as big. As a rough estimate I think that Singapore harbour could load and unload about 100 container vessels simultaneously. The logistics of the operations there are incredible. There are tens of thousands of containers which need to be loaded or unloaded, moved around and taken away. How this works I don't know, I just see and endless amount of trucks driving round with containers going to a particular cranes which load/unload onto a vessel or the wharf. I just hope they have a damn good IT system to manage it, because apart from location there is little to identify those containers. Now docking the Theodor storm, a 212 metre ship, is no mean feat. The vessel is squeezed with a few metres on either side into a berth that is not much longer than the vessel itself. But it was done without a scratch, bump or dent. I had arrived!
As you can tell it is an exciting way to travel particularly when arrive in Singapore. I wasn't sure what the captain did as out on the open ocean most of the navigating and operations is completed by the officers. But watching the Captain move this 212 metre vessel, elegantly amongst all the ship, primarily by radar (as it was night time) was impressive and being Russian, he didn't look at all fussed at what he was doing.
After arriving, at 1am, I went to bed but was woken at 3am to sign some immigration papers that I had not been told about and went to bed, again. Waking up at seven I showered had breakfast and left the boat at around 9am. By which time already a large amount of the containers had been already been removed (They do about one every 1 to 1.5 minutes and have three cranes working simultaneously). With the assistance of a bus provided by the freighter company I managed to make my way out of the terminal, after one of the customs ladies felt the need to search my guitar after I moved it (apparently suspiciously) to stop it getting damaged. No harm done. Then I put my lousy taxi skills to the test to take me to a backpackers I saw on a map. This took 30min as I haven't much practice in getting a taxi (I must have missed about 10, before getting one to stop). Anyway the backpackers in Little India turned out to be a good choice and I am settled in, eating well and am easing myself into doing things about which I will tell you more later.
Thank you for your time and I wish you all the very happiest of new years! End part 1
Arien
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Political assets, unlike financial ones, are not apt to increase over time. If not made use of, they can, in an instant of crisis or war, evaporate - John Shell, 2007
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