September 29, 2007 at 4:28 pm (Mike Mate)
‘Man over board!’ The cry echoed across the decks. Crew rushed forward to reef sails, others took positions with their arms pointing out, like weather vanes, towards the casualty bobbing in the sea. Mate Madeleine positioned the crane as Phil and Daniel prepared the rescue boat for launching. I put the wheel over, turned the Rainbow Warrior and made a lee to launch.
Within 15 minutes of ringing alarm bells a little buoy was unceremoniously dumped on deck to a gallant cry from participants. And then nearly all the crew, including me, jumped overboard. For an hour the Rainbow drifted thirty miles off Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, as crew splashed about in water 100 meters deep.
Obituary: The owl is dead.
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September 28, 2007 at 3:53 pm (Mike Mate)
There’s a general fuss about the ship; fresh water wash down – crew about with deck scrubbers and buckets of soapy water. Maldives is behind us and Sri Lanka only two days ahead. It is a time of assessments. Bags are being packed, addresses exchanged along with promises to write. Five will disembark (more than a third of the crew). Chow and Patto will each go their own way: she to Mexico and he to Argentina. Last night they watched that enormous moon together. This morning the ship awoke to the cry of murder.
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September 27, 2007 at 3:10 pm (1)
Rainbow Warrior has been joined by a small owl. It arrived last night by the light of the Harvest moon, flew about the rigging and then, when morning came, took roost in the quite, dark, though awfully hot, forecastle store. We are 200 miles from the nearest Maldives and Lakshadweep islands, over 400 miles from the continent of India. The sea is like a lake, hardly a ripple – all is quiet.
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September 26, 2007 at 3:12 pm (Mike Mate)
Sun sets in the west. Rainbow Warrior heads east, heads for a Harvest moon – the largest full moon of the year. I am eating a bowl of ice cream sitting on the love seat beside Chief Mate Madeleine, watching the moon rise out of the bridge windows. The ship rolls easily from side to side, not many more days to go. More traffic appears on the radar screen as we approach the Eight Degree Channel, north of the Maldives. The sails are lit by the light of the moon.
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September 25, 2007 at 3:11 pm (Mike Mate)
‘We are seenkeen.’ Tapio look sover the rim of his spectacles, curls his lips, sucks on his dentures and then continues. ‘Sea warter is comink through port auxiliary exhaust pipe. We need to make a repair job.’ He then asks me to list the ship over to the side to bring the exhaust out of the water.
I furl the sails, swing the booms across to windward and alter course, putting the sea astern to reduce rolling. The engineers seal the leak with a hose clamp and rubber. I notify the agent in Colombo to arrange for a welder on arrival. Sails are reset (with exception of the ripped jib) and away we go.
Rainbow Warrior is making good speed – the intensity of rolling has decreased. But, it is still impossible for me to sit at my desk – I wedge myself into my bunk in order to write
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September 24, 2007 at 3:09 pm (Mike Mate)
We changed over from one engine to the other today. The running hours were up on the starboard and it was ready for an oil change. The wind tried to jibe the ship when we did so – too much push on the mizzen, main and fore sail. Without the jib our steering is compromised. We need the engines to maintain course, but most of the push is coming from the SW monsoon blowing into the reefed sails.
The sea is wild and the rigging sings that Cat Stephens song, “miles from nowhere”. Saw a ship today, and flyingfish a-plenty.
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September 23, 2007 at 5:02 pm (1)
Barbeque on the bridge deck –the 50th birthday party for the Rainbow Warrior (the crew were too busy in Greece,on the actual day). Everyone dresses as a Rainbow or a Warrior. Chief mate Madeleine has made a replica of the ship out of modeling clay which is awarded to Pato(Patricio, Argentinean cook) for best dress. I shave a Mohawk and drape the Zulu signal flag over my shoulder (a nautical twist on Zulu Warrior, but all I receive is an applause for doing the gum-boot dance above the chief engineers cabin (Tapio is not attending, he’s eating his steak alone – not interested in monkey business). It’s a lovely evening that precedes a night from hell.
At two in the morning we emerge from the lee of Suqutra Island. A large swell slams into our beam from the South West and the wind picks up to Beaufort force seven. The Rainbow starts rolling through an arc of 50 degrees. The birthday cake (saved for Sunday) collides with a can of iced tea. I batten down my deadlight as wave after wave crash into the porthole. Patrick reefs the sails to 70 percent but it’s not enough for the jib. As the sun rises on the day of the equinox, the jib splits.
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September 22, 2007 at 3:07 pm (1)
Tags: pirates, rainbow warrior, suqutra, yemen
Deep sea and in need of water– what looks like a fishing boat calls the Rainbow Warrior. Patrick and I study it through binoculars. There seem to be many people on deck. The skipper is asking for water. It is easy for me to answer ‘NO!– Keep away from me,’ but I feel a cruel twist of realities. The overriding feeling, however, is the very real fear of PIRATES.
There are two identical boats a mile apart with blue and white painted hulls, perhaps 25 meters in length sporting a white cabin in the centre. They appear to be sea worthy, both underway and making way through the water 80miles away from an island in the most reputed pirate waters of the world.
Suqutra is the largest and most outlying island off the horn of Africa. It belongs to Yemen. We turn, leaving it behind – 1500 nautical miles of Arabian Sea lie ahead of us. Rainbow is under sail, riding on the last of the SW monsoon winds. I hope we don’t need engines before Colombo.
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September 21, 2007 at 5:18 pm (1)
Patrick and Daniel arrive on the bridge at ten-to-midnight, cups of coffee in hand. Slade is peering into the radar screen as I fill in the log book at the end of watch. ‘Mike look at this,’ he points to an echo not far from the ship. I pick up a pair of binoculars and walk out to the wing. I see nothing. The four of us are now standing in a row at the ship side railings peering into the darkness. Patrick and I check the radar. The echo stretches out –it’s over a mile long, and closer.
A distorted veil of waxed moonlight – the first quarter of Ramadan – spreads its long fingers across the surface of the sea outlining something in the water but then it sinks. Midnight passes. The image on the radar screen grows to resemble a five mile island on collision course.
‘Turn on the search light.’ I call to Patrick, who is back in the wheel house studying the radar. Patrick flicks the light switch and the sea explodes – with fish. They come leaping,flying and flipping out of an aquamarine well that has risen to meet the light. It is all so beautiful that I stand transfixed. Five miles of little fish, each no more than a foot long.
‘Can you smell them?’ More a statement then a question from Daniel – ‘It’s like a fish monger’ I remain on the bridge for an hour after my watch has ended, just watching the fish sparkling in the well of aquamarine and tasting the scent of life somewhere north of Somalia.
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September 20, 2007 at 4:57 pm (Uncategorized)
Just imagine 360 million years ago in the Carboniferous period. A dense forest of lepidodendrons: their two meter diameter trunks soaring forty-five meters into the air and branching out near the tips with short, straggly bits, bearing long grassy leaves. Dragon flies with meterwide wingspans flying in between them,
Today,twenty-five tons of that Carboniferous forest produces one litre of petrol. In one year we burn and release four hundred and twenty-two years worth of blazing light –carbon stored beneath a Carboniferous Sun.
What are we doing?
Rainbow Warrior in the Gulf of Aden is hot but there is relief: the sea temperature here is 32°C, it has dropped 3°C since leaving the Red Sea.
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