Category Archives: Blog

Sea day

Sunday 16th March

What a wet and miserable day we found today when we woke up, thank goodness we are at sea, yesterday was a lovely Spring type day and today is a typical winters day. We are having satellite problems, because there are so many satellite links in Japan and the ships relatively low power satellite communication system is having to compete with their signals. The weather does not help and as a result not much is getting out and not much is getting in. I have managed to get one or two photo’s from my phone up to the cloud ashore but emails from the tablet are effectively gummed up. We had a Q&A session with Lord and Lady Howard following their individual presentations which was interesting, but I felt was a bit rehearsed. Diane Simpson’s in contrast was excellent, she spoke about her first talks and the terror she felt when she realised that a talk she thought she was going to give to a small group turned out to be a talk to a packed theatre. She had everyone falling about laughing as she told of how she was planning to collapse on stage, but had to brief her husband so he would not be concerned. If you ever have chance to see her talk; go! Her range of subjects and her stagecraft are brilliant.

We are heading north and due into Yokohama in a very tight window as we can only get under the bridge when the tide is at its lowest. Which we understand is about eleven pm. So I will be up there to see if we make it.

Limboing Under the Yokohama Suspension Bridge

Monday 17th March

We made sure we did not linger too long over dinner last night as we wanted to get the best (highest) point on the upper deck for the suspension bridge, but we needn’t have bothered, not many people (i.e. dozens not hundreds) turned up to watch. We slowed right up to make sure we hit the tide at its lowest point and then literally inched our way towards the centre point of the bridge using the bow thrusters to position ourselves just right. Left a bit, right a bit, stop, wait, inch forward. We were not going to do it, no way on this mans earth were we going to get under that bridge. There were shouts of stop and wait, women were squealing and running for cover. Tiny bit by tiny bit we crawled forward stopping starting waiting for that vital low tide point. Everyone’s neck was aching and right up to the point of hitting the bridge we all knew we were not going to make it. As the mast head met the first girder, it slipped under it with barely space for a fag paper. Huge shouts of “No Way!” The second girder came and the same gasps whoa! Well, of all the bridges in all the world that was the tightest fit I have ever seen and it seemed as if the ship itself had been holding its breath, because as we finally cleared the second girder, vibration beneath our feet told us the engines were picking up speed and sure enough we began to move forward at a renewed pace for the short period between the Bridge and our berth at the new Yokohama International Passenger Terminal.

The skyline was a sea of lights, one of the best we have seen easily competing with New York. Set in the centre of this mass of illumination was the jewel in the crown, the Ferris wheel, a brilliant kaleidoscope of colour changing from rotating spokes, to Catherine wheel effects, to expanding Circles of light and yet this centre piece of night time display was all but invisible in daylight. After taking all this in, we made our way down to our cabin as the temperature was becoming (as they say in this part of the world) a bit nippy. We had hardly got into our cabin before we heard some huge cheers and when we went out onto the balcony and looked down, it seemed like the whole of Yokohama had come out and packed themselves on to the roof of the terminal to welcome us. Large numbers of them with light sabres and wands, those that didn’t, had torches or mobile phone lights and they were all waving them like their lives depended on it. Cheers went up with each rope that crossed to the quayside. We were amazed that anyone would come out at midnight let alone the crowds that had turned up here. Everywhere we looked there was someone shouting Hello! Welcome! Or Konichiwa. We finally had to go or we would have been there all night.

Up first thing the following morning, we looked out again and yes you’ve guessed it the roof of the terminal was still awash with people. The same or new ones we knew not, but the level of interest had diminished not a jot. The International Passenger Terminal is a very deceptive undulating building which seems to be construct entirely of wooden planking reminiscent of ships decks. Entrances were well disguised as they sloped and curved around the structure. A lot of the roof was turfed and many people were sitting there with their children playing around them. On the port side of the ship was the main part of the city where modern buildings were nestling in amongst some of the older buildings like the old brick warehouses that have now been converted into shops restaurants and offices. The modern buildings were sympathetically designed unlike other large cities. The Intercontinental Grand Hotel was shaped like a huge liner and the shape of the Landmark tower like a huge square traffic cone, this by the way is Japan’s tallest building. The city is very compact and attractive with lots of green areas, a lot of these on the roofs of some of the single story buildings around the port.

We waited until the tours departed before we disembarked, most of these were going to Tokyo with one going to Mount Fuji neither of which we fancied and from the reports from the people on their return it seemed like we made a sensible decision. We left the ship directly into the terminal which was huge and very cleverly designed. Traffic entering at the far end of the Warf disappeared below the building into cavernous car parking areas and above these were that halls for arriving and departing passengers. We walked off the Warf straight into the city towards the stadium where there were landscaped gardens, the weather was perfect for walking, warm bright spring sunshine and cool air temperature. The waters in the gardens were populated by Koi Carp and large terrapins sunning themselves on rocks set in the pools, one of the nicest things about these gardens were the groups of tiny tots being led around by their carers. Each carer held the hand of a tot on each side and each tot held the hand of another tot, behind each carer were three individual pairs of tots holding each other’s hands, no crying, no problems and their age? They looked to be about eighteen months to two years old, they were all wearing identical coloured baseball caps, some groups in pink caps some in yellow etc. It would never be allowed in the UK but it was a delight to see.

We moved on into China Town and wandered around this immaculate area for about an hour, before ending up on the edge of the bay in the Yamashita Park, this is a two kilometre immaculately landscaped area with fountains and tree shaded paths which led us back towards the Passenger Terminal. As we passed it, crowds were still pouring into the area, the ship has certainly attracted a huge amount of attention. We followed the walk over some green hillocks which turned out to be the roofs of the buildings below and all along this area were people taking photographs and dozens painting pictures. We walked through into the central district and everywhere they had converted the old infrastructure into new. Old railway lines used in the old docks were now landscaped footpaths. Old docks had been filled in as part of land reclamation and were now pedestrian precincts, as space is at such a premium here you can’t help but wonder how they have prevented development on much of this land and used it as a public amenity. By now we had completed a circuit of what is quite a compact city and forced our way through the crowds pouring on (and off) the quay.

You begin to have some slight understanding of what people in the media eye go through as all passengers were being photographed by the crowds and when Carol was out on the balcony people were shouting up to her to get her to wave for photo’s. We went up to the Lido having a late lunch/early tea and looked down at the mêlée below where they were preparing for the celebrations for our departure. On an oblong of black matting a group of about ten Japanese were consulting notes and laying green gaffe tape out to precise measurements. We watched as they started to lay out little white tubes it took about two hours to complete and it turned out to be a message to us “Bon Voyage” and underneath “Yokohama” we thought that’s an awful lot of effort for those three words, until they started to light hundreds of candles, one in each tube. The effect was fantastic (photos on the way internet permitting). By now you would think that things would be quietening down, not a bit crowds were still pouring on we wondered if the roof would stand the strain. I went down to try and upload photo’s using the WiFi in the terminal, and as usual had to ask a Japanese girl on the WiFi stand for help. She and a friend of hers took me down to the far end of the hall where they said it was quieter! I wasn’t sure what they meant until I realised that they were talking about WiFi traffic. Then using a card they bought with them they asked for my phone, pressed a myriad of buttons, giggled, bowed, gave me the phone back saying “you OK” now. I still don’t know if I managed to get any back, but it was a delightful diversion.

Before I went back on board I wandered up to the roof to mingle with the crowds to see what it looked like from their perspective, Carol was not on the balcony or I would have shouted up in a suitable accent “Cawol Smile” but she wasn’t. We had to sail bang on time to get under the bridge again. So after dinner we went up on deck to watch our departure. The crowd was in high spirits and there were lot of shouts between them and the ship. Carol went down to watch from the balcony (it was cold), but I wanted film of hitting the bridge (if we did). We pulled away with the usual blasts from the ships horns loud cheers from the shore and as we pivoted to head for the bridge I clambered up to the position I was in when we came in. This time we reached the bridge quite quickly and we went for it at a faster pace than when we came in (captains confidence?) but again it looked very tight. This time there were crowds on the bridge and a lot of shouting between people on the ship and people on the bridge. We again slipped under with barely an inch to spare confirmed by the shouts from the people watching from the bridge who were also convinced we were going to hit with the very top of the mast, but we didn’t and so we slipped away down through the deserted industrial part of the city and out to another day at sea, prior to Kobe.


Killings then and now

Tuesday 18th March

Another wet and miserable day at sea, we seem to be lucky with the weather, dry sunny (but cool) in port saving the wet and miserable for sea time. Up late, leisurely breakfast then down to the theatre for the first of the mornings talks. We now have Lord Robert Winston on board giving a series of lectures this one about early Renaissance Art and its secrets. Impressed that I’m going to such highbrow talks? Well this one was brilliant, he put slides of well-known Renaissance paintings by famous artists (well he said they were and as they are hanging in famous art galleries then I suppose we have to believe him) and then proceeded to tell us what the subjects were suffering from and how he knew. Apparently Renaissance artists were sticklers for detail which helped no end in his diagnosis and as the subjects were well known and the date of the paintings known, it was quite easy to tie up the subject’s history of illness, death etc with the date of the painting. He pointed out known bruising someone suffering from the black plague would have, and often as the family wouldn’t want it known they would say he had died from something else. On and on through many different illnesses and conditions like dwarfism in its different forms. The artist even had the colourings for the different conditions right. One painting of an attractive nude woman, he described as suffering from a mental condition, the name of which escapes me and said her husband would have led a life of hell because of it. He diagnosed this partly from the history of her behaviour and partly from the pose and the expression on her face.

His final painting of a husband morning the death of his pretty wife, who it was said he had killed with a spear when out hunting mistaking her for a wild animal in the undergrowth as she ran towards him. Robert Winston said the evidence in the painting pointed to murder. The slight bleeding from the small cut in the neck was typical of a spear point exit wound not an entry wound. Other minor cuts on the body and in particular cuts on the hands pointed to her defending herself prior to turning and running, whereupon the husband threw the spear which hit her in the back of the neck penetrating the neck high up at the back right through down to the front. But the killer evidence was the angle of the hand in death. It was bent unnaturally at a sharp right angle towards her body, which is evidence of a typical spasm caused by the spinal cord being cut through and from the small incision low down in her neck this was extremely unlikely to have happened from the front. So he said rather than a tragic accident, this was more than likely murder.

And talking of murder the second talk was by Ian Brown an ex Detective Superintendent who worked on the Kray’s case. He talked about the Krays with anecdotes that you don’t see in the books, like they were as thick as two short planks, they had animal cunning but they were thick. They never bet on the horses because they couldn’t understand the odds. They left evidence lying around because they thought they were invincible, their tame Lord wouldn’t help them and the bent coppers wouldn’t so they were banged to rights. His delivery style was typical of an officer briefing the squad before a raid, peppered with funnies and jokes. Nothing fazed him, even when the projection went wrong, he quipped “well that’s that then. There was this fella went into a pub…….” When the tech scampering around got it working he said “that it? – You got your 15 minutes of fame then!” The audience loved it. Both Robert Winston and him are on for five talks each so looking forward to the rest.

Kobe

Wednesday 19th March

8:00am sees us alongside in Kobe the home of the famous Kobe beef of renowned quality so tender it is said to melt on the tongue, no we didn’t have any. Kobe is also the home of a number of Sake brewers, yes we did have some, I liked it Carol didn’t, I had hers too.

Kobe is another place that has suffered earthquakes. In 1995 an earthquake measuring 7.3 destroyed most of the city killing 6,443 and leaving 300,000 homeless. As Japan’s sixth largest city, it must have had a big effect on the country.

We were not on a tour here so we caught the shuttle bus into town 15mins and after a walk round China town (yes all Japanese cities seem to have one) we jumped on the hop on hop off bus, which turned out to be a hop on only as there were so many waiting at each stop we didn’t think we would get back on if we got off. The commentary was by a lovely young Japanese girl who almost sang her commentary (Carol described it as lilting) couldn’t understand a word of it of course, but after a while it began to sound like a lullaby and I found myself drifting off, was she just repeating the same thing? After a full circuit, we got off and needing to find a loo we decided to go into a nearby department store by the name of Daimaru which turned out to be quite interesting, apart from the fact that all the ladies queuing for their loo could see straight into the gents at a long line of men stood facing the wall, bit off-putting to say the least. But while I was waiting for Carol I watched staff entering and leaving the office. Before they entered, they turned and bowed to the store and when they came out they bowed to the store even if no one was watching. Can’t see it catching on in Debenhams somehow.

Anyway, as we were in the store we decided to have a look round and went down to the food section in the basement. It was fascinating, a fantastic variety of cakes and breads and the fish section sold pre packed live giant prawns amongst other live fish. Can’t imagine that catching on in Tesco somehow. After that we decided to walk back to the ship where we wandered around all the exhibits on stands in the terminal. You could take part in the Japanese tea ceremony if you wanted but I thought it too much faff to get a cup of tea so I had a pint of Japanese beer which was surprisingly good, tawny straw colour, but not at all like lager. I spent a while trying to upload some pictures which gave me an excuse for another pint and Carol went back on board. Later an all-girl band started playing traditional Japanese music on those guitars that lay on the floor, at which point I went back on board. Before we sailed we were entertained by two dragons following each other around nose to tail. You could hardly see the people underneath 🙂 .

Day at Sea

Thursday 20th March

At sea again sailing down the coast of Shikoku Island towards Nagasaki still in the Pacific, but after Nagasaki we shall be entering the East China Sea days at sea will be scarce soon so best get the most out of this one, i.e. doing not much. Late breakfast again and then to another of Robert Winston’s talks, this time Human Instinct – Can Science make you happy? He talked mainly about how the brain has not changed in structure for millions of years, but grown in size and power. Hard wired functions like fear of spiders and the need to eat when food is abundant, but more importantly it was the ‘acceleration’ of power of the brain. This talk was followed by Ian Brown on the Ronnie Biggs story using a lot of Charmian Biggs and family material and refreshing the story of how he was not included on the robbery originally but as he said the he knew a train driver they let him join. Only to find out too late (i.e. on the train) that the train driver drove steam trains and couldn’t drive diesels. Another case of the master criminal myth buster. Oh! and he gave us the reason why they got thirty years each, a massive sentence at the time. He met the judge many years later and asked him why. The judge said he wanted them to serve ten years, but the labour government had just introduced two thirds remission for good behaviour in an effort to reduce prison populations, so in order for them to serve ten years he had to give thirty. The unintended consequences of good intentions. That’s all for today onwards to Nagasaki.

Nuclear Bombs and Squid

Friday 21st March

As we neared Nagasaki an early breakfast rewarded us with a wonderful typical Japanese dawn sky, the sort you see in water colours or painted on silk. A grey sea with smudgy dark grey islands in the foreground, lighter grey mountains on the horizon, backlit by a low lying soft orange which gave way to pink and then pale blue. Splashed on to this backdrop were thin wisps of light grey cloud. As we watched, the colours changed from pastel becoming more vibrant until the sun finally emerged as an intensely red molten disc, gradually changing to gold before the increasing intensity of its light finally swept all the colour from the sky. It was a spectacular sunrise.

Now. Nagasaki. What to say without sounding negative. After that curtain raiser of a sunrise we were looking forward to our day in Nagasaki, but the shore landscape was not too promising. Heavy industry was the message it was sending us as we sailed up between the two shorelines, shipbreaking yards, industrial units and shabby warehouse estates were all that we could see. Our trip was to the peace park in the centre of town. Nagasaki is the home of the second nuclear bomb on Japan that effectively ended WWII, but compared to Hiroshima (the site of the first bomb) I felt it didn’t have anywhere near as powerful message. This could have been for any number of reasons. Nagasaki was not the intended target for the bomb, that was covered by cloud on the day of the raid and the pilot had orders that he had to have a visual confirmation before releasing the bomb, so they diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki. When they arrived it too was covered in cloud and so as the three aircraft were on the point of returning without releasing the bomb, a window opened up in the cloud and they saw Nagasaki through it and took the opportunity to released their Bomb which was intended to destroy the shipyards on the opposite side of the harbour however for whatever reason (no one seems to know why), it exploded over the town about three miles from the shipyards which remained intact. The peace park is quite small and most of the monuments in it are gifts from other countries. As no one knows for sure where the bomb exploded they have marked a position where they think it did. Most of the remains they have on view have been dismantled from their original position and rebuilt near the peace park. So I can understand the difference in feelings between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima was the first city to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon, it was the intended target, the bomb exploded on target, evidenced by photographs and the building right under the exploding bomb remains in its original position as part of the peace park and the peace museum is located within the peace park. Nagasaki by contrast was a standby target. No one is sure where the bomb actually exploded but they know it was over the city and not the dockyards. The peace park is an area close to where they think the bomb exploded and they moved remains to it rather than leaving them in situ. The peace museum is not part of the peace park so it is all rather disjointed and the message they are trying to give is thus a bit diluted. But in fairness one of our table said he preferred Nagasaki as it concentrated on the damage to things rather than to people, as Hiroshima did.

In the afternoon we went to look at old wooden colonial buildings and the first paved streets that were installed by the Dutch in the eighteen hundreds. These are still attracting tourists from all over Japan, even though they do now have paved streets everywhere. Oh and yes I wondered that too. But it looks like the bomb exploded over the nearby hill, thus protecting this part of town.

So there you have it Nagasaki in a nutshell. A decent crowd turned out to wave farewell (as it was only 6.00pm) together with the (by now) obligatory band and for a change, a line-up of pompom bearing cheerleaders. As we did our customary 180° pirouette (I think the captain likes doing them just to show off – wheeee look at meeee). I noticed twinkling all round the harbour and on closer inspection realised that there were crowds lining every available space. All the industrial unit car parks were full of workers taking time off, cameras clicking away like demented Christmas tree lights. We left to many a cheer again and sailed into the East China Sea en route for Korea.

PS after getting turned in at about midnight I had hardly closed my eyes when the cabin lit up as if in a searchlight. Carol was zonked so I got up to see what was happening and not very far away were what looked like a pair of extremely bright headlights pointing straight at us, furthermore there were other identical pairs dotted all over the place. They were so bright I couldn’t identify what on earth they were, so I got the binoculars out to have a closer look as there couldn’t be cars driving around and they were definitely moving so they couldn’t be oil rigs which was my first guess. It was another first for me, I’ve never seen anything like it before but once I’d focussed in on the lights I could see a smallish fishing boat with two booms extended port and starboard. On each boom were suspended about twenty-five extremely bright (blue white) lights with silver reflectors. They were steaming at about ten knots so I guess they were towing some kind of net and not using rods, no idea what fish they were after, but if I find out I’ll let you know.

PPS Just found out they were fishing for squid, apparently the lights attract them up from great depths into the nets they have on the surface.

Korea – Busan

Saturday 22nd March

Well here we are in Busan in the Republic of Korea another heavy industry centre with massive docks. We are some twenty-five minutes away from town by shuttle bus, not much chance of walking it then, so onto the shuttle bus we scuttled, well queued as everyone else had the same idea and we hadn’t given enough time for the early birds to fly the coup. Although I have spent about a week in Busan before, it was some 35 years ago and I’m afraid I can’t remember much, but one thing I’m sure about was that the underground had not been built because I was there as part of a consortium who were bidding for its construction. Well we didn’t win the contract and the underground has been built for many a year.

The city centre has an amalgam of far eastern elements. The markets are just as vibrant as many others but Korea, in many of its cities, has built underground markets. Busan’s underground malls are similar to Seoul’s, perhaps not quite as plush but just as effective in protecting against extremes of temperatures. This use of being underground is interesting because we saw in Brisbane that they put the traffic underground so the public could enjoy the outdoors without traffic. Here in Korea they reverse the system to protect the public from the outdoors, the lighting is such that you could easily imagine you are in a ground level mall.

Busan also has a massive fish market which was just as fascinating I took quite a few videos which I will try to upload in Hong Kong where I’m banking on some better links. But to give you some idea of the content, we watched in fascination as girls skinned live eels putting the still writhing ‘naked’ bodies in the pots for sale. Yep we got video, but everywhere in the market were live fish, crabs, lobsters, shellfish and molluscs. There was a lot to see but after a while we realised that a lot of it was more of the same. The markets were packed with locals though and the fast food stalls were going flat out dunking strange looking white blobs into hot fat which instantly turned into appetising golden crispy objects. Many of the people eating them were taking photos before tucking in (evidence maybe?). Anyway that really was all there is to see in Busan in a few short hours (unless you are into temples and we’ve heard one or two people say we are all templed out. As you probably know, this part of the world is rather over populated with the genre). So we clambered aboard our shuttle and made our way back on board, in time for a bite before nipping up into the commodores bar for a couple and to watch our departure, as the sun set. So just about a twelve hour whistle stop. Next port Shanghai.

Day at Sea

Sunday 23rd March

Another day at sea, we are beginning to need these as they are getting few and far apart. The weather is beginning to get a smidgeon warmer as Busan was, to say the least a bit parky, even though the sun was shining all day. There are the first signs of the sun worshipers beginning to populate the pool deck, though some of them were wrapped up in towels and dressing gowns. We are currently steering a westerly course along what is in effect the boundary of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea as we cross from the Korean Peninsula to Shanghai. We are surrounded by small fishing vessels, many of which appear to be working in pairs though it is difficult to work out what exactly they are doing. Today’s talk was about the Brinks Matt Gold Robbery, Ian Brown was responsible for tracking down and recovery of the missing £26M (three tons) gold. He told a cracking story of how this was done including the cockups made by police decisions regarding surveillance which led to the murder of a police officer. The on board internet connection continues to be a pain with many passengers complaining but I think I got mine away by timing the connection during the crossover between the two sittings for dinner. Clocks go back an hour tonight, putting us eight hours in front of you. That’s about it for today. Shanghai tomorrow including trip on the maglev train so looking forward to that.

High Speed Trains and Slow Speed Traffic

Monday 24th March

It was quite a long approach to Shanghai, we took on two pilots at 2:30am, one for the approaches and the other for the Chang Jiang estuary of the Huangpu River close to where it joins the Yangtze River. The Yangtze is Asia’s longest river at 3,900 miles and is the scene of that famous Incident involving HMS Amethyst. Both rivers are light brown to yellow with the sediment brought down and are known locally as yellow river (or sometimes, mud river) which is probably the origin of the Yellow Sea’s name as they both flow into its southern end. Shanghai is the fourth busiest port in the world and it looks it, as a constant stream of ships has passed us inbound and outbound sometimes two or three abreast. We went ashore for a trip on the maglev train out to the airport and the journey from the port to the station took over an hour through what appeared to be thousands and thousands of residential high rise tower blocks. With a population of 8.8 million, Shanghai is not what you call an attractive city though it is impressive by virtue of its sheer size. Some of the individual buildings are unusual, but as they seem to have been placed merely to outdo their immediate neighbour and the whole effect is one of piecemeal development, all a bit of a hotchpotch really. We arrived at Longman Road Station and boarded the train to Pudong International Airport station. The journey was to take eight minutes and reach a maximum speed of 431 km/h but we only got up to 301 km/h in both the outbound and inbound journey, but it was an impressive journey given the rate of acceleration for a train full of passengers and the closing speed of some 700 plus km/h when two trains pass each other. From the maglev we moved on to the Jinmao Tower to see the city from the observation platform taking the express lift at a speed of 9 metres per second to height of 384 metres (approx 1300ft) in 45 seconds. From there we got the true scale of the city (and the true scale of pollution in the form of smog), however looking down inside the tower we had a stomach churning view of the foyer of the hotel some 54 floors below us, not a view for the faint hearted. All things considered it was an interesting visit but Shanghai is not the sort of city you can take to your heart and the journey back to the ship underlined that fact as it took, getting on for 1hr 45mins for the return journey, put people who were taking second trips under some pressure. Interestingly enough for a city with so much traffic (55,000 taxis) the cost of a driving licence alone is twelve thousand US dollars, and at one stage the council was issuing two new ones a month. Extreme measures for parking spaces such as sharing a space with another car on alternate days, I don’t know where they park when it’s the other persons turn. Some streets are closed at night and turned into car parks. And get this, you can be given the death sentence for drunk driving at the most extreme. Driving is a bit of a nightmare, as to give way is to lose face and that goes for giving way to pedestrians at a pedestrian crossings, so to cross the road you launch yourselves as a crowd with your fingers crossed. They call it the sticky rice technique, you just have to hope it doesn’t turn into a stick mess technique.

Day at Sea

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.