Tuesday 25th March

Last night we were at dinner on our own as the other four were ashore watching a late acrobatic show and were not due back on board until about 10:00pm so as a result we were finished early and decided to go up to the commodores lounge to have a drink and watch our departure from Shanghai in comfort, serenaded by a crooning piano player. Almost spot on 10:30pm we cast off, slid sideways from the quay for about 1,000 metres (no 180° turn this time) until we could slip into the stream of traffic leaving the port. When I say port I don’t mean port in the way that I understand port to mean i.e. an area where ships can tie up and take on or discharge cargo like Felixstowe or Harwich. I mean ‘P O R T’ as in the size of a Country! We seized the opportunity to slip into a gap in the continuous stream of passing vessels, in a manner that you would join the motorway from a slip road. Bearing in mind that this is late at night and there was a stream of vessels of a similar density heading into the port, which begged the question where in hell are they coming from and going to? Well, looking upstream we could see, as far as our eyes could see, illuminated berths on both sides of the river with working cranes dealing with the lucky ones who managed to get alongside. To say we were transfixed would be an understatement, everywhere we looked were ships, manoeuvring, crossing and waiting their chance to get wherever they were trying to get. I guess this is why we need two pilots. But what is the most gobsmacking fact of all this is only the fourth busiest port in the world. I’d love to see the busiest. Anyway we secured our place in the main flow and accelerated up to the speed of the lane we were in (there being three lanes, as any self-respecting motorway of ships would have. A bit disconcerting as in the dark the banks look closer and the ships appear from nowhere). We must have watched this procession for about 45mins before we decided to call it a night and wander off to our cabin. After getting changed for bed, I noticed we were still passing wharf, so I got the binoculars and spent another hour or so absorbed in the riverside, as by resting them on the window I could watch a continuous ribbon of wharfs pass by. When I finally decided to call it a day, I put the TV on channel 40 to see if we were anywhere near the mouth of the river. The forward looking bridge Webcam showed, for as far as I could see on camera, more wharf, so I thought sod it! (Language Michael). I now know how HMS Amethyst must have felt trying to escape down river; the river never seems to end (yes! yes! know, we were in a different river, but you know what I mean). I clambered into bed and watched until I felt asleep, more and more cranes ………..zzzzzzzzzzz. When I opened my eyes, I thought I had imbibed too much, as there was nothing to see, no land, no sky and no sea, just fug (is that a word?) The sea was as calm as you could expect in the East China Sea, but it could only be seen by looking straight down from the rail i.e. 10 metres we had cloud down to sea level, normal for here, some people call it fog, the captain included. The sea state was a green oily swell but it was spoilt by the rubbish that floated by, a lot of it was seaweed, some clumps bigger than small islands, but appallingly there was a huge amount of flotsam and jetsam (i.e. rubbish) old fishing net buoys, drums and plastic cups and amongst it was a rather nasty scum floating within the rafts of seaweed. It is the dirtiest sea I have ever seen. Weather is improving. The chill of Japan and the bitter wind of Korea are now behind us and the temperature for tomorrow is predicted to be 28°C as once more we head south. We are tracking the Chinese coast, following the busy shipping lanes travelling through a lot of fishing areas.

Robert Winston gave another of his excellent talks “Bad Ideas” will we still be humans in 100 years? Will manipulating genes to improve the human race lead to consequences we didn’t intend, will it lead to the objectives that Hitler set out to achieve, the perfect human race? Followed by Ian Browns talk on Kenneth Noyes life of crime, getting away with murder of a police officer, escaping sting through a bent police sergeant. Another Chinese port tomorrow looking forward to seeing what this one has to offer.