The Last Odyssey (part1)

My arrival into Madang was at 0950 Tue. Cargo planes are not the most comfortable things in the world and I confess to having a numb bum on arrival and the need to walk a bit to get locked up joints again working. Struth! the years do catch up with you don’t they?

My contact was waiting with his Cessna (no good roads even today), and we took off for a spot just outside Lae, where contact No#2 was waiting (and a Yank at that but a very old one) with a launch.  I shall, for the sake of these scribblings, call the ship ‘BAG’ as that’s what the crew call her, it stems from the fact that she has a rather pronounced stern and has the nickname of the ‘Big A****d Girl’ although I think she should have lost the tag of ‘girl’ over a quarter of a century ago.

The skipper/owner is a Turk but for some reason his first name is (or so he says) Clive. I would have had a chuckle at that but rope ladders and I don’t go together too well these days and I spent the first ten minutes onboard trying to get some air into my lungs, much to the amusement of all. I used to be able to climb rope ladders like a rat up a drainpipe – Oh well. There are three other watch keeping officers but not one of them has a real certificate of any kind. The crew call them Buggerlugs, Primrose and ‘The Idiot’, I leave the reasons to your own imagination.

Although I am not exactly getting paid, I do have to work, it’s part of the ‘no questions asked’ deal. Wednesday and Thursday I assisted the cook, then Clive discovered that I was an ex MM and I am now standing watches and doing all the tasks of a chief officer (sorry no fancy uniform just shorts and sandals – underwear optional) this has put Primroses’ nose out of joint as he is now relegated to some form of Jnr 4th Officer – still if you want rank you should earn it, not pay for it. Clive is happy because now he can take proper breaks from the bridge and leave the driving to somebody else for a few hours.

These ships often let people buy a position onboard, the reason being that international regulations demand that you have a given number of watch keeping officers according to vessel size and/or configuration. This can be expensive, much better to actually have people pay for a uniform, provided somebody knows what to do everybody is happy … until things go wrong. Their Monrovian and Panama certificates are, in a way, legal but only in ships of convenience. Actually the BAG has some pretty up to date bridge controls and radar and nav equipment is top of the line – very strange. She was even re-engined in 1989 and has a couple of very sweet Gotaverkens sitting down there.

I will go into the crew later. They are a very mixed bunch which seems to split into two age groups. There are the young guns who still believe they have a future worth living for and the older mob like me that know that they haven’t. One of the kids has only been at sea five months. He was living happily in France but on his wedding day his bride to be was killed in a car crash, another had a promising future in the Merchant Banking system when, overnight, he found that he was bankrupt (been there done that), and his wife suddenly didn’t want to know him anymore. There are many such stories within this crew; somehow the sick lame and weary seem to find their way to this old girl. The older guys are here because, somewhere along the sealanes of life, they fell down and couldn’t get fully up again. However, this is not an unhappy vessel; in fact she has quite a cheery atmosphere. Clive is an undemanding type of skipper and I am willing to bet my last dollar, which is about what I am down to, that he is ex military, you can always spot your own kind. I bet Jim can spot another cop, even in mufti.

Pt Moresby hasn’t changed, it was a foul place years ago and it is still a foul place today, I shall be glad to get away. Then we will be in Indonesian waters - that’s not good, I just hope we can stay out of reach of prying eyes, we are not exactly friends. Still we shouldn’t be in their playground for too long and then we can all start to breath freely again. I have always had a nasty feeling about Indonesia; I think it’s a world problem waiting to happen.

I will leave it here for a while, I’m going through a rapid relearning time, BAG might only be 17,000 GRT with a crew of 18 but watch keeping is still a responsibility. One great benefit is that I haven’t slept so well in a very long time and no dreams that I can remember. Now I have to finish the bunkering and get gear stowed and bunker ports closed ready for shoving off. We have topped right up with MDO plus taken as much freshers as possible. Add this to the full load of cargo we have (will go into that later) means we will be riding very low in the water, actually about one third of a metre below the official max load line, so am hoping for a heap of calm weather.

0945 continued
Now, on a lighter note I read in the paper this morning (direct from Oz) that the Yankee devils have now really upset the Aussies big time and that it could turn nasty, indeed has already turned nasty. What is this great international incident you ask? – Well, the Americans, for some reason known only to their own very strange mentality (they are almost as weird as Aussies), have banned Vegemite, the national Aussie food (I hate the stuff). Seems there is some ingredient in it that doesn’t conform to some petty regulation. Banning it is one thing but it also appears that some over zealous US border guards threatened to imprison some innocent Aussie tourists because they had a tube of Vegemite to put on their breakfast toast – it seems that they even had guns pointed at them when they had the audacity to protest – now that just isn’t cricket or the way to ensure you keep your good allies on side (especially when down in Oz it was evidently splashed all over the evening TV news). I can just see the headline. “Australia Breaks Off Diplomatic Relations With US Over Breakfast Toast Spread”. So, it seems that drugs and terrorists have now taken a back seat to a far more terrible foe, the dreaded “Aussie Vegemite Munchers” who, it appears, are a grave threat to national security.

My only big decision every day is if I am going to have three or four sausages with my 3 fried eggs, 4 rashers of bacon, hash browns and three slices of fried bread (all smothered in tomato ketchup) for breakfast, all washed down with triple strength black Turkish coffee. You have no idea how great it is NOT having somebody around to tell you that you are not allowed to eat stuff. I am very pleased and proud to announce that nobody in this ship is a yoghurt, cereal, health food muncher – it’s all good honest western style tucker – cooked by a Japanese gentleman by the name of Sam who is around 78 years old and served in the Imperial Japanese Navy during WW11. Ya just gotta chuckle; this world of ours sure is one heck of a strange place.

More from Sri Lanka, probably around the 9th if things go well.

Harry