Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Sydney





After a 48 hour stopover in Sydney, it’s off to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains for the next three nights. During our stay, Sydney was in the throes of preparations for New Year’s Eve celebrations which will be centred around the Circular Harbour and Darling Harbour areas. Restaurants are all advertising special New Year’s Eve parties with prices in the region of AUS$500 (€250) per head for tables with views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House where the pyrotechnics will welcome in 2009. However, you don’t have to pay these prices to view the fireworks - there is plenty of free entertainment on offer as well around the harbour as well.

If you look very closely at the photo of the Harbour Bridge, you can see a group of people on the very top of the bridge just to the left of centre. These are tourists who have paid for a Harbour Bridge Climb experience which takes visitors to the very top of the bridge - not for the fainthearted (or the poor) !

Sydney is a very busy city with an unusual juxtaposition of thirty storey plus modern skyscrapers and hotels in the CBD (Central Business District) rubbing shoulders with older buildings dating from the city’s Victorian past.

Flicking back briefly to Melbourne, just down the road from where we were staying was a mural celebrating the making of the movie “On The Beach” in 1959. This movie was based on Neville Shute’s (a Melbournian) book of the same name and, as far as I can remember, told the story of the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.


Corrections to my literary recollections are welcome...

Caption competition

Post your suggestions as comments below !

Friday, December 26, 2008

Yule at the pool

We’ve spent the last five days in Melbourne with the family of George & Anna, who made us really welcome and showed us great hospitality. They live in Mount Eliza, a suburb of Melbourne to the southeast of the city. The day after we arrived, I went into the city by train and joined the last minute Christmas shoppers thronging the shopping centres and streets in the sunshine. The Salvation Army was much in evidence with many brass ensembles playing carols on street corners, just like I would have been at home on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve (well, almost just like..)

On Christmas Eve, we went to watch the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island. This is a huge attraction every evening as hordes of people turn up to watch the penguins make their way from the sea to the burrows in the sand dunes where their chicks have spent all day waiting for their parents to return and feed them. The whole spectacle takes about an hour from the time the first wet bedraggled birds lurch up the beach to the time when they are all back in their burrows, but because the timing is so unpredictable it involved about two hours’ waiting on a cold beach for their arrival!

Christmas Day was spent with George & Anna and their family, a huge meal with antipasti, cannelloni, roast pork and all the trimmings, followed after a suitable interval by a swim in the pool and then another meal of cold seafood - oysters au naturel and Kilpatrick, huge prawns, smoked salmon and more.

Tomorrow morning (Saturday 27th) we tear ourselves away from this fantastic hospitality and great food and set off very early on the long (911km) drive along the Hume Highway to Sydney where we will spend the next two nights. More from there anon....

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Whitsunday cruising



The week’s cruising has come to an end and we have reluctantly handed back the keys to “No Ties”. This was probably my ninth or tenth charter holiday and one could not fail to be impressed by all aspects of the service provided by Charter Yachts Australia. From the moment we were met and brought to our boat, to the excellent and very thorough briefing to the test sail before departure (that was a new one on us), everything had been thought of. We had ordered a provisioning package for the entire week and this had been delivered to the boat, unpacked and put on board an hour or so before we arrived - even down to the cockpit fridge having been well stocked with beer and Coke !

The cruising area covered by the charter is relatively small in terms of miles from north to south but almost unlimited in the number of anchorages, beaches, bays and sailing possibilities it offers. We spent most of our time circumnavigating Whitsunday Island and covering some of Hook Island and spent one night moored at the luxurious Palm Bay Resort on Long Island, where we had dinner ashore. The weather was consistently good, with winds ranging from 10 to 20 knots between NE and SE. Temperatures were just over 30° every day with some days being just a little too humid for comfort.

The snorkelling was of mixed quality (some days the wind was a little too strong which made underwater visibility rather limited) but we lost count of the number of turtles we spotted (almost impossible to photograph though), especially in some of the shallower anchorages.



Sailing a cruising catamaran was a new experience and certainly makes for comfortable sailing (no need to be too careful stowing everything away before setting sail) and good off-wind performance. Tacking, however, was another story and was best achieved with a little engine help. Having two engines with individual controls makes for really amazing manoeuvrability and it was very easy to spin the boat on her own axis. The boat was very well equipped and onboard kit included a chart plotter and autohelm along with all the usual stuff.




Although we started our charter at Airlie Beach, we finished at the marina on Hamilton Island, an island resort just south of Whitsunday Island, from where we flew to Melbourne for a five day stay. This whole small island is basically a holiday resort with its own airport, a 210 berth marina, about 1000 regular residents, 1500 staff and goodness knows how many holidaymakers all in full swing. Our three hour flight to Melbourne (with another hour added on for Daylight Saving Time) saw us arrive at about 4pm and we then had to face the navigational challenges involved in getting to our hosts in south east Melbourne, our home for the next five days.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Airlie in the morning

Airlie Beach was my stopover for two days until the rest of the crew arrived on Sunday. I suppose this was really my first main destination all along when I left home on 14th November so it has taken me exactly 28 very enjoyable days to get here. Michael & Jane, on the other hand, managed to make it from London in a little over 24 hours - how boring is that ?

Airlie is a real backpacker centre with plenty of hostels, shady bars, and eateries and the prices are good value compared to the inflated Irish prices we have all become used to in recent times. Last night, I had an excellent dinner of sole (on the bone) and chips for AUS$21.95 (about €11). Wines start at AUS$25 a bottle, with most mid range wines (e.g. Oyster Bay SB) being priced at about AUS$35 (approx €17).

Just around the corner from Airlie Beach is Abel Point Marina. This is the last marina we’ll see until we hand the boat back at Hamilton Island on Monday 22nd as all of our overnight stops will be at anchorages for the next week. The latest forecast I have seen is for F5/F6 (20-25 knots) from between SW and SE. Just like sailing at home, tides will need to be factored into our passage and anchoring plans. We are just coming off springs now which means that we can expect tidal streams of 4 to 5 knots in some of the passages between the islands (not quite as bad as between Rathlin Island and Fair Head) and the range (at springs) is about 4 metres so anchoring in shallow waters will need careful planning.

Friday, December 12, 2008

A land down under

My first visit to Australia kicked off with my arrival in Brisbane at 0700hrs on Wednesday morning. This was a very brief stopover in “Brissy” as my train to Proserpine (nearest station to Airlie Beach) leaves at 1300hrs tomorrow so, between catching up on my sleep after the overnight flight and having a quick scout around, I didn’t have enough time to explore the city properly. However, from the little I saw I can say that Brissy is a city with a nice feel to it. It is a busy commercial centre with lots of activity and plenty of life, especially around the pedestrianised Queen Street area.

All the usual High Street stores are accompanied by carol singers, Christmas trees and Santa hats, all of which feel more than a bit out of place in this heat !


The temperature here today was 32°C (which is a little hotter than normal) but the main subject on the news was, you guessed it, the economy. There is speculation that the Central Bank will come back from summer holidays early in January to introduce an interest rate cut and that variable mortgage rates may be reduced from their current level of 6.7%. The Queensland government has just announced a package of tax hikes to prop up the provincial economy but is hoping that coal revenues (priced in US dollars against a falling Australian dollar) will help to fill some of the growing revenue gap. While having dinner, I overheard conversations at three different neighbouring tables about a slowing housing market, so apart from the weather (and being able to have bacon for breakfast), it’s just like being at home !

My overnight train from Brisbane to Proserpine left Roma Street station at 1325hrs on Thursday and was a very pleasant trip. My “fellow travellers” included an English guy who now lives in Papua New Guinea (PNG) with his PNG wife and two children, an English couple on a touring holiday en route to New Zealand for a family wedding and an Australian couple on their way north to Cairns. Comfortable accommodation, good food and interesting company.

Next update will be from Airlie Beach, one of the main jumping off points for the Whitsunday Islands. I'm going to hang out here with all the backpackers until Michael & Jane arrive on Sunday to pick up "No Ties", our twin-hulled home for the next week.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Day 2 in S'pore

Well, I'm pleased to report that the weather improved, everybody went back to work and the shops and hawkers all opened up again on Tuesday after Monday's holiday. According to the Straits Times, about 6,000 sheep were specially imported from Australia to be slaughtered as part of the festival which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience.

On Tuesday I visited Chinatown and did a walking tour of some of the main sights in that area. Like most major cities' Chinatowns, the area is absolutely buzzing with ethnic Chinese and tourists alike but I got a real feel that the buzz, the smells and the sights were not just for the tourists' benefit. For lunch I had a real Singaporean delicacy, chilli crab, in a local Chinese street restaurant. Delicious !




















The next three photographs were all taken from the same place and show the streetnames of three parallel streets in Chinatown (you should be able to enlarge the photos by clicking on them):



After retrieving my bag from the hotel, I made my way to Changi Airport by subway for S$1.80 (€1.00), and am writing this using the free wireless access available throughout the airport (Dublin, please note). My flight to Brisbane is at 2105 and will arrive there at about 0700 local time (GMT +10 hours).

I then have just one day in the city before taking the train up the Queensland coast to Proserpine, near Airlie Beach.

[By the way, apologies for the rather random way in which photographs appear on these pages. They are supposed to be carefully positioned and sized but that tool doesn't seem to work very well. I'll keep practising...]

PS The Irish pork recall has received much publicity in Singapore with long newpaper articles on the subject, some of which contain reassurances for Singaporean consumers. I suspect that, even if the immediate problem is resolved swiftly, the long term consequences in terms of loss of confidence could be significant. And now it looks as if beef is involved too......

Monday, December 8, 2008

In transit in Singapore

I don't think I picked a particularly good time for my stopover in Singapore (and my first visit here) en route to Australia and I don't think that I will be rushing back soon. Not that I have anything against Singapore, it's just been very wet and most of it is closed ! My hotel is "off Orchard Road" at the western end. Orchard Road is the epicentre of the shopping centre that is Singapore. For those who haven't been here, Singapore's population is slightly greater than Ireland's (estimated at 4.8m in 2008) and has a land area of almost exactly 1% that of Ireland. As a result, it appears somewhat crowded, to put it mildly. It is strange to be in a place where the majority of residents are ethnic Chinese but the main language is English.

I arrived here on Sunday afternoon and spent a couple of hours catching up on emails and updating my blog before starting my explorations. On Sunday afternoon, I walked along Orchard Road, This long street is lined on both sides with shops, shopping centres (in multi storey buildings), and restaurants. In fact, the principal entertainment in this city state seems to be shopping so if you are not interested in traipsing around shops, then the appeal would appear to be limited.

By a lucky chance, I happened to be passing the main entrance to Istana (the presidential palace) when the monthly changing of the guard was taking place. This involved a very impressive and well rehearsed drill display in smart white uniforms with a lot of stamping of feet.


The formal handover from the old guard to the new guard was followed by a Military Police drill routine which was more like a wellchoreographed dance routine with rifles, all accompanied by a military band playing a medley of Christmas tunes at breakneck speed.


My visit has unfortunately coincided with persistent torrential rain (which has caused landslides and fatalities in neighbouring Malaysia) and a Muslim holiday (Hari Raya Haji). As a result, when I ventured forth into the floods on Monday, a lot of the shops in the smaller (and older and grottier) centres were closed, while the larger more modern malls were absolutely jammed with people on holiday from work and sheltering from the downpour which persisted all day without a break.

One of Singapore's best known culinary attractions is the many hawkers' stalls.
While these originated as small stand alone stalls, they are now found in organised centres. One of the best known of these is the Newton Road Centre, where I waded my way to at lunchtime on Monday. Unfortunately, due to the holiday, about 85% of the stalls were closed so my choices were somewhat limited, but I had a good lunch of a fried minced pork dish (not Irish I hope !) and fried won tons for S$10 (about €6).

I guess no visit to Singapore would be complete without a visit to what is probably one of the most famous hotels in the world so, after my lunch, I navigated the metro system to Raffles. In keeping with the rest of Singapore, this is more of a shopping centre than a hotel.



However,the entrance is impressive.



Off to Brisbane on Tuesday night.....

Where are we ?


When I eventually made contact with the blogosphere again yesterday, I was impressed to see how the progress of the Ital Contessa while I was on board had been tracked by some of the keen members of Bray Sailing Club. Some of you have asked me where this information comes from so here's a brief explanation (as far as I understand it !) :

The first source of data that some people were looking at is AIS data. The photo on the right shows a busy AIS screen as the Ital Contessa left the Straits of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean. AIS stands for Automatic Identification System and is a means whereby ships transmit data by VHF. The data transmitted is a combination of dynamic and static information. The dynamic data includes information like navigational status (e.g. at anchor, underway by engine, underway by sail, not under command, etc.), speed, latitude and longitude. The static data contains information such as the vessel's callsign, destination, estimated time of arrival, draught (which will obviously vary depending on cargo carried) and ship dimensions.

The second source of information was from the website www.sailwx.info. The Ital Contessa (along with many other oceangoing vessels) carries weather reporting equipment and, in return for the Officers on watch carrying out regular weather observations and reporting them back to a central reporting station, the ship's position is then plotted and made available to view on a public website.

The principal differences between the two data sources are : as AIS is transmitted by VHF, it is normally only receivable within line of sight. On board, this meant that other vessels normally appeared on the AIS display when they were about 30 miles away (depending on the heights of VHF antennae and weather conditions). This may seem like a long way off, but two container ships each doing 25 knots towards the other will meet after 36 minutes so it's not all that long when you consider how long it takes to turn or stop one of these ships at speed. When a vessel appeared on the AIS display, the Officer of the Watch always looked at the detailed data being transmitted. This helped him to make decisions about likely changes of course that the other vessel might be about to make, what sort of vessel he should be looking out for, etc. In addition, the radar display provided much more detailed information (based on the "target" vessel's most recent speed and course) about likely crossing times, Closest Point of Approach (CPA) and Time to Closest Point of Approach (TCPA). This information was used at an early stage to decide whether a course alteration was required. Standing instructions on the bridge were that if the Closest Point of Approach was one nautical mile or less, then a course alteration should be made at an early stage. If for any reason this was not possible or there was any doubt about the other vessel's intentions, then the Master was to be called.

AIS data (as it is a VHF transmission) is receivable by anyone with suitable equpment (either a dedicated AIS receiver or a modified VHF radio) and within receiving range. There is a large community of ship watchers who receive AIS data on their own domestic equipment at home and share it with various websites who then make this information available to all and sundry. One of the most popular such sites in the British Isles is www.shipais.com (most members are in Liverpool or on the Clyde but data from Dublin is also shared by a user in Ireland). However, the possibility of tracking the progress of an oceangoing vessel across the whole world is very limited as this depends on the availability of enough shore based receivers who "share" their data. Naturally, the vessel is out of range of any shore receivers at all for long periods of time.

The other source of information is from the weather reports. On the Ital Contessa at any rate, these are taken at intervals of more or less six hours. The observations (including the observing vessel's position) are then encoded and compressed into a very small data file which is transmitted to a central station by a satellite phone link. When the receiving station receives the data and includes it in their weather charts, they also (as a quid pro quo) publish the position of the vessel at the time the observations were made. However, as some of you will have noticed, this system is not without its shortcomings. Firstly, it relies on someone on board carrying out the observations and sending the file. (This is not a compulsory watch duty and so is not always carried out.) Then the receiving station needs to publish the data received. Normally this happens quite quickly but some of you will have noticed that the last reported position of the Ital Contessa dates from 4th December, although I know for a fact that many updates have been sent since then so it is not a particularly reliable source of infomation.

So, for the landlubbers among you, I hope this clears up some of the mysteries about how you can find the position of a seemingly invisible ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean...

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Link to photos

For anyone who's interested, I've uploaded some photos from the voyage to photobucket - just click HERE and it should take you to them.

Back on Terra Firma

It seems like an eternity since I logged on here and posted an update so firstly, apologies for the long gap. The reason for this is the longest single break in my internet connectivity since the invention of the World Wide Web.

After my last post, I made my way to Rochester in Kent and took a taxi out into the reclaimed wastelands of North Kent to Thamesport and joined my floating home for the next three weeks or so. After staggering up the long gangway with my suitcase of books, I was shown to my cabin (the Purser’s suite, no less) on F deck by one of the deckhands. When I boarded, there was a lot of activity taking place and the loading and unloading of containers by four enormous gantry cranes continued right through the night and up until less than an hour before we left on Tuesday afternoon. I was left to myself on Monday night after I boarded but met most of the officers and my only fellow passenger (Bruno from Switzerland) at breakfast in the Officers’ Mess the next morning.



Once we set off from Thamesport on Tuesday afternoon, things settled into their normal routine and I started to find my way around. Every day on board a ship is divided into six four hour watches. For November, the watches are allocated are as follows :

0000 - 0400 : 2nd Officer (or 2nd mate)
0400 - 0800 : Chief Officer (or 1st mate)
0800 - 1200 : 3rd Officer (or 3rd mate)
1200 - 1600 : 2nd Officer
1600 - 2000 : Chief Officer
2000 - 0000 : 3rd Officer

The Captain, or Master, does not have a set watch of his own but spends time on the bridge during almost every watch and normally takes over command of the vessel in situations where close manoeuvring is taking place, when there is a lot of other shipping close by, or where there is doubt about the intentions of other vessels. He also has a lot of paperwork to deal with, including monitoring weather reports, corresponding with the ship’s operating company in Germany, dealing with port authorities, filing regular safety and inspection reports, etc.

As someone with a keen interest in sailing and navigation, for me the opportunity to spend time on the bridge watching the navigation and running of such a large vessel was one of the most fascinating aspects of this trip. I found that passengers were welcome on the bridge at any time without prior appointment - I believe that not all masters are as happy to have passengers wandering around but the fact that there were only two passengers on this voyage probably helped. The officers were, without exception, very friendly and quite happy to answer all sorts of dumb questions. The bridge itself was extremely impressive, a large open space with excellent all around visibility and a big chart space for chart work and the hourly updating of the ship’s log book and the plotting of positions. The technology on board is quite amazing - the vast majority of our time at sea was naturally spent on autopilot, often with distances of many hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles between waypoints and course changes. While a physical watch is kept all the time, the radar is also monitored constantly to keep an eye on other ships, hazards, etc. When the ship is to be steered manually (for instance, when entering a port or navigating through the Suez Canal), this is done by the AB (Able Seaman) on watch, following precise instructions issued by the pilot, master or Officer of the watch.

As the Ital Contessa is operated by a German company, many of the officers (Master, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer) are German. At mealtimes in the Officers’ mess room, I was seated at the “international” table and dined with the Second Engineer (Polish), Chief Mechanic (Chilean), and Second Officer (Finnish). All of the deck crew, engine room crew and galley crew are from the Philippines - there is a very strong seagoing tradition there and the crew are all provided under contract by a Philippines crewing agency. They typically serve a seven month contract with no breaks (which means not even one day off) and then usually take a month or two off at home before starting another contract. The deck officers are fulltime employees of the operating company and typically serve sixteen weeks on (which on the Ital Contessa means two complete round trips from Hamburg to China and back again), followed by eight weeks off. The Master is on a different rota and does eight weeks on followed by eight weeks off. I am not sure if this is because of his position as Master or whether it is because he is employed under a different (i.e. older) contractual arrangement. As in many other walks of life, newer officers’ contracts are more demanding and involve more time at sea and less time between voyages.

My only fellow passenger, a retired Swiss post office regional manager, was en route to Hong Kong to visit his son and daughter in law for Christmas. His wife, who thinks he is mad for travelling by freighter, will be flying out to join him there. He is a seasoned passenger, this being his fifth voyage since retirement so he was a useful source of information about some of the protocols and procedures on board.

Meals were served in the Officers’ Mess at times that are designed to fit in with the watchkeeping system. This meant that breakfast was at 0730 hrs, lunch (the main meal of the day) at the far too early hours of between 1130 and 1230 and dinner at 1730 hrs. The food on board was surprisingly good but there are no choices. A weekly menu is posted on the notice board so we had lots of advance notice of what was coming up.

In between meals, passengers on board a freighter are free to do whatever they want. One of the most welcome differences between this trip and a voyage on a cruise ship was the lack of organised “fun”. My normal morning routine consisted of trying to learn some Indonesian from the lessons I have downloaded to my iPod, a walk of at least two laps of the ship (approximately 1.5kms), which usually involved a few stops for chats with crew members carrying out maintenance jobs, and some reading, with coffee available at 1000 hrs. In the afternoon I usually spent a couple of hours on the bridge with the Second Officer. Officers usually keep watch alone during daylight hours while we are making passage but have the assistance of an AB between dusk and dawn. Evenings after dinner are usually very quiet - sometimes I join Bruno for a beer in the Officers’ Recreation Room (which we always seemed to have to ourselves) or watched a borrowed DVD in my cabin. I usually spent an hour on the bridge with the Philippino 3rd mate before bed. The AB on watch between 2000 hrs and midnight spent some time telling me about his former parish priest, an Irish Columban father, who seems to have been a great influence on him.

One of the most interesting parts of the voyage was the passage through the Suez Canal. We arrived at Port Said at the northern end of the canal at approximately 1300 hrs on the day our convoy was to depart. Our slot had been pre-booked (months in advance) and all during that afternoon, other ships assembled at the anchorage and anchored in their preallocated locations. At about 2230hrs, we heaved anchor and made our way slowly towards the canal entrance where we were boarded by a Suez electrician, a Suez mooring crew (in case we had to moor to the bank on our way through for any reason), a canal pilot, the ship’s local agent, and a Suez inspector. The agent and inspector left again after a short visit as we made our way very slowly through the centre of the city of Port Said, in second place in the convoy. After passing through the city, we continued very slowly (which for us means 9 knots) until we reached the Great Bitter Lake at about 0400hrs. Here we anchored to allow the northbound convoy to pass us. As the canal is not wide enough to allow two ships to pass each other, there is a carefully worked out system of convoys in place. There are two south bound convoys each day, the first one (i.e. ours) starts south at about midnight and anchors in the Great Bitter Lake (a little more than halfway south) to allow the one northbound convoy each day to pass without stopping. Each southbound convoy consists of up to thirty ships. The second south bound convoy moors in a bypass section of the canal to allow the northbound convoy to continue without stopping. The most interesting part of the canal passage was the section south from the anchorage, which we left about 1300hrs. It feels very strange to be proceeding along such a narrow waterway so slowly with nothing but desert and the occasional settlement or military outpost very close on both sides and to have similarly enormous ships just in front of and behind us. We left the canal at about 1700 hrs and started picking up speed again as we entered the Gulf of Suez and then the Red Sea.















Above, the convoy leaves the Great Bitter Lake for the second leg southbound














One of the many military guardhouses on the east bank of the Suez Canal


At left, the convoy leaves the canal and enters the Red Sea at the city of Suez

The next issue we had to deal with was the Somali pirates. While this issue receives a lot of publicity, I am told that the risk (for us at least) was relatively low. According to news reports, the pirates have captured approximately thirty ships in the last twelve months. This is in the context of about one hundred and twenty ships per day passing through the area in question. Modern container ships (like the Ital Contessa) are at lower risk as they travel much faster than tankers (approximately 24 knots as opposed to 15 knots) and have a much higher freeboard (distance from the water to the deck) and are therefore much harder to board at sea.




















Nevertheless, the risk was still taken seriously and we were all briefed about additional security precautions as we left the Red Sea : all outside doors were to be kept locked, extra watch keepers were on duty on the bridge at all times and we altered course to travel closer to Yemen than Somalia (in other words, a more northerly course than our rhumb line course would have dictated). This route took us along the so-called “Coalition Maritime Safety Corridor”, a 500 mile long, ten mile wide area which was apparently patrolled by an international force of airforce and naval vessels (none of which were visible from our bridge !).














This was a bit of an anticlimax as we saw and heard almost nothing at all for the entire passage through the corridor. However, we did receive some reports of continuing hijack attempts, some of them successful so the pirates are very much still in action. The current French provided security arrangements are due to end on 5th December as an EU force takes over.














AIS screen showing an empty sea with the Yemen and Somali coasts at the Horn of Africa

After leaving this area, the remainder of the trip was pretty uneventful as we had one complete week of long distance ocean sailing to my final destination in Malaysia with very few course changes and practically no land to be seen anywhere. Our course took us past the bottom of India and south of Sri Lanka and then on to a slightly more northerly course towards the northern end of Sumatra before turning south east down the Straits of Malacca towards the southern end of Malaysia. The Straits of Malacca (with Sumatra and Java on the western side and Malaysia on the east) are one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, used by all ships travelling between Europe and the east coast of North America and Malaysia, Singapore and the Far East. On arrival in Malaysia, the shipping company’s port agent arranged a transfer for me to Singapore where I checked into my hotel and found free wireless access ! Now I just have to wade through 218 unread emails…

By the way, I am experiencing telephone problems which mean that, while I can receive text messages, I am unable to send any or make calls so apologies to those of you who have been sending me messages - I haven't been ignoring you !