Blue Book of Boats

We enjoyed a lovely sail into Cairns harbor, with many boats, both sail and power around us. Large power cats are popular but I think most are not yacht,but tour boats.

As we come in to dock we pass many yachts at anchor, then still more on moorings and finally what looks like a marina with no floats,boats just tied to pilings bow and stern. I went to the starboard side of the ship and was surprised to see we are right alongside our dock, which is in the center of town.

Cairns is a lovely resort city,fairly small. There is a big convention center that looks like a flattened and curved concertina. One lady asked if it was the opera house. Sorry lady, wrong city!

The ship has a big “Aussie Barbie” going with suckling pigs, whole chickens on beer cans, and shrimp the size of lobster. The line up is long and the smoke thick. I have one beer with our “group” but I don’t eat. I head off the ship to see that town at about 6 PM. It is still light.

Coming off the ship, I turn right and start to walk along a wide sea wall which I can see extends a long way, curving off to the left. I can hear jumbled music in the distance, as if coming from several places.

“Excuse me.” I hear a voice from behind me. Two Australian women, are strolling behind me. “Are you off the ship?”

They question me about where the ship is from and I describe the voyage briefly.

I ask them where I can find a seedy bar for a drink and a snack, and they hold a brief discussion about which is the seediest place. The description sound I bit rough.

“Maybe not too seedy. I don’t want to get killed!”

They laugh and one says “Oh, that never happens. Well, no more than once a week or so.”

They walked with me to the Esplanade area where the restaurants, night market,and bars are. Along the way we passed one tree that is absolutely crammed with cheeping birds, green parrots. There are lots of trees, but it seems every parrot in Cairns lives in this one. It is dusk now and I spot a few bats flitting around. Big ones!

The Cairns waterfront is lively, and we come to a nice looking beach. I remark that it is lovely to have a swimming beach right in the middle of town.

“I don’t think you should swim there! Crocs!” and sure enough I spot what could be the snout of a crocodile just protruding out of the water. Behind the beach is a large salt water swimming pool. No crocs allowed.

I offer to buy them a drink. They exchange wary glances then agree. We sit in an open bar/pizza joint and have a drink, then share a pizza. We chat for an hour while we eat. Very good thin crust Pizza. One of the women is a sailing enthusiast, and she is excited to find that I have met Peter Blake, who is her hero. She’s a nurse from New Zealand. I can’t tell her much about him since I met him in San Diego at one of Bill Koch’s huge parties, and it was no more than a handshake and a brief chat.

When I try to get the bill, I find out one of the women has already paid it! I try and reimburse her, but she is having none of it. Aussie hospitality is amazing. They walked me most of the way back to the ship, taking me through the huge Night Market on the way. Most of the merchants are Chinese, and they sell everything from stuffed crocodiles to didgeridoos to boomerangs, as well as the usual junk. There are many massage booth, $15 for 40 minutes the signs say. They are busy. Tables are right in plain view, they have a sort of flimsy half curtain on a few of them. The masseurs are very young Asian men, and they don’t look to expert to me. What do you expect for $15?

I thank the ladies for their hospitality and we break off. I haven’t spent a single penny of my Aussie money. I’m back on board in time for the “Australian Cultural Show” which is five painted aborigines. The first five minutes is didgeridoo music, which starts out sounding like a badly tuned short wave radio (remember those? Anyone?). Then it expands into an amazing and haunting array of sounds.I liked that part but the rest is the standard “embarrass the tourist” stuff as they drag a couple of hapless men up on stage and try to get them to play the didgeridoo. They can only make farting sounds.

More later, I’m off to the Great Barrier Reef.

This is our last island before Australia. I got up early to watch us come in. The weather was cloudy and cool (23C) but humid. From a distance the island was not as impressive as the Polynesian islands, but as we approached it looked better and better.

Port Vila harbor is large, deep and well sheltered with several commercial docks. We tied up at a cruise ship dock which was under construction, no buildings or facilities, located about 5 km from the center of town. No brass band here! There were lots of taxis and buses waiting, and just outside the port there were many vendors with tables set up.

Vanuatu was formerly the French/English joint protectorate known as the New Hebrides (shouldn’t it have been run by Scots?). It has been independent since 1980. There are three official languages, English, French and pidgin. I never really thought of pidgin as a language, rather I thought it was a “dumbed down” version of English.

Hearing it spoken, I realized it is a real language, and I understand about as many words as I would if it was Korean!

I left the Port and turned right (town is to the left) and walked along a dusty road until I came to the water then followed the beach past some attractive waterfront homes, some with swimming pools, interspersed with tin shacks. There was a boat repair yard with about a dozen yachts inside, one or tow nice ones, the rest pretty rough. Although it was a weekday, and the gates were open, I couldn’t see any work going on. I met and spoke to a few locals on the beach, but they didn’t have much English, just Pidgin. One older man with a little boy (the boys hair was almost blonde, bleached by the sun I suppose) spoke to me in a friendly manner. I asked if the boy was his grandson. He didn’t understand so I said “Him son belong you?”. Amazingly he understood that and shook his head, said “Blong brother belong me” which I took to mean he was the boys Uncle.

The people here are Melanesia, and look negro, but with different features form Africans. The have lined faces and even young people look older than they really are. Most are not good looking by our standards, but are gentle and polite. You would never guess that this was the land of headhunters and cannibals, the Big Nambas and Little Nambas and the cargo cult that worships John Frum. Look it up! There are lots of other islands and this is the capital, so maybe the original culture is still out there somewhere.

I walked further and came to a lovely sheltered beach with clear blue water and white sand, not a soul on it. This sign was on the beach. Can anyone translate it?

The next day, I was able to get a translation for this sign. Here it is:
PUBLIC NOTICE
U BLON KAREM
COREL MO SANBIS
LONG PLES IA
SIGN: OWNER

Translates as:

YOU DON’T CARRY CORAL OR BEACH SAND AWAY FROM HERE

I went out on the aft deck of the Amsterdam this afternoon and had a look at the wake. Contrary to my guess that they had repaired the prop at Suva, the ship is running on one engine. It is pretty obvious that it is the starboard side that is OK and the port side damaged. There is only slight turbulence from the port prop, indicating it is either free-wheeling or perhaps running dead slow.

Could one or more of you fire off an email to Holland America and ask them what the Amsterdam hit at about 5:30 PM,Monday October the 19th between Pago Pago and Suva? It would be interesting to know their response. There has been no official mention on board but many passengers are speculating.

Last night at dinner it was “Pirate Night” with the crew and some passengers all dressed up with eye patches, hooks, peg legs and other pirate gear. Dinner took a long time as they kept stopping to have their photos taken.

In the middle of dinner the ship hit something. There was a thump and a shudder went through the ship, then a minute of so later the starboard prop made a large vibration. The dining room is right aft directly above the drive pods, so I could easily identify the sound and vibration. The engines were idled and I suppose the props were stopped, as the ship went very smooth and silent. Then a few minutes later the engines started up again, but all night there was a noticeable vibration from one prop. I think it must have been a whale, as the thump was muffled and whatever hit the prop did not make any clanging noises as you would expect it it was something metal such as another boat or floating container. No announcements were made so it remains a mystery.

We arrived in Suva as scheduled so it didn’t slow us much. Still, I’m pretty sure the prop is damaged.

Suva is the largest city in the Pacific Islands with over 200,000 people. It isn’t very pretty on approach as the port is industrial and there are a lot of rusty old ships at anchor.

As we docked a large Police Band appeared and played a large selection of music, starting with marching tunes but then there were Beatles and at one point they were dancing the Macarena on the dock. The side of the ship was lined with people as they applauded this performance. It certainly made us feel welcome.