Mike Mate

Across the way from where we are anchored is a rice field, the proposed building site of a nuclear power station. The field is overshadowed by a volcano. It does not make sense to go nuclear in front of a volcano. Nuclear does not make sense anywhere: immense costs in construction, long term pollution, proliferation and terrorism… I tire of reading all the reports.

Indonesia wants to build a nuclear reactor right here in Java, on a fault line. The local villagers do not want it and today over a thousand joined the Greenpeace crew to form a human banner – in the rice field. It was so peaceful on board the Rainbow Warrior with nearly everyone ashore for the protest. Diek and I set the sails at anchor to send a signal to shore.

I rode my first mechanical bull in a Galveston Texas country club at the age of nineteen. I was good at it, stayed on all night long with just one hand on the reign. My mind jolted back to that cadet ship whilst standing in the bow of the big rhib skimming across the top of the water at a speed of 36 knots, one hand on the painter line and the other pointing out obstructions; fishing stakes and buoys. Al drove me to Jepara, a nearby village, for a meeting with a large Californian ‘specialist’ and his girlfriend. I brought with me a lead line (a line weighted at one end and marked along its length with coloured whippings every meter). At the berth in Jepara I dropped the weight over the side of the rhib. It pulled the line into the water to indicate a depth of 3 meters. I will not be bringing the Rainbow Warrior alongside in Jepara.

The power station is lit up yellow in the black night, alive with coal powered incandescent bulbs. I weave around fishing boats to get closer and closer to the shore. At the twenty meter contour I turn to parallel the coast. There is a rock I want to clear before putting the wheel hard over to starboard and turning 90 degrees – strait in towards the land. I pull back a little on the throttle, navigating now by echo sounder alone. The digital display of numbers gets smaller, and a green electronic line rises up to indicate ten meters of water beneath the keel. I slow a little more. The night is pitch black and the coastline, less than a mile away, is invisible. Seven meters – I slow down some more. The bridge is silent; all eyes watch the numbers diminish. At five meters I put the pitch of the propeller to neutral, allowing the way to come off Rainbow Warrior. At four meters I put the engines astern – to stop. I have anchored off the coast of Java island, off a power station, on the way to Bali.

Rainbow Warrior has been open for public engagement over the past two days and her decks have been filled with visitors in the wake of media attention – following the blockade of the Palm Oil Tanker in Dumai.  The president of Indonesia has not come down to visit me.  He has, however, been the first president to congratulate Kevin Rudd, the newly elected prime minister of Australia, on his landslide victory.  Rudd’s labour party has stepped into the driving seat because of their commitment to combat climate change and to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.  George Bush is left standing alone as the greatest threat to the planet; a weapon of mass destruction.   Will the United States of America bring welcome news to Bali in a week’s time?

Weaving through Jakarta traffic on the back of a motor bike (my taxi) along roads flooded from the high tide or blocked sewers to Sunda Kelapa, the old harbour of Batavia.  There, in the early hours of morning, I watch men working like ants walking up and down the gang planks of brightly coloured schooners, on their shoulders long lengths of milled planks – the forests.  The maritime museum is housed nearby in a forgotten VOC spice warehouse, paint falling off its massive walls and the photographs on display peeling – but the wooden beams holding up the roof are tremendous.  From the old watchtower the breathtaking view is of a sea of garbage.  And along the path I walk every hundred meters a pile of plastic, raked together and set alight – black toxic smoke.  I take shelter in café Batavia.  Leather upholstery, cool fans turning from tall ceilings, I put my cup of Java on the low coffee table and feel comfortable amongst the portraits of the rich and famous.  I think about outside – the population, the poverty – I feel good inside, the sanctity, the smell of old leather and coffee.  I contemplate the difference between the two on a Sunday morning in Jakarta.

Two Indonesian war ships raced up to us, their marines faced out; legs apart, hands behind their backs. I watched and wondered. Stacks of missiles mounted on the foredecks faced us too. Rainbow Warrior was sent to anchor; the grey war ships anchored one on either side. We waited for Tanjungppriok port to grant us permission to enter. /Oh boy, here we go again./ But they let us in. A pilot came out, he asked for a Greenpeace T-shirt and then stood back to let me bring the boat alongside. I am in Java, an island that is ten times smaller than South Africa but with a population three times greater. I am here to witness a decision being made (positive thinking) that will reduce the emissions from Indonesia’s peat soils from two billion tonnes of CO2 to less than 500 million tonnes CO2 annually. Greenpeace is calling for a ten-year moratorium on peat forest conversion and the drainage of peat soils.

Babu is telling me his story: life as a cook with Hapag Lloyd, the container ship company. The bridge is dark, outside and the two lookouts watch for pirates. I watch the radars and listen to Babu. He is from Cochin, India, and crossed the equator on his first ship in 1979. Today he took the role of King Neptune. I delay putting a position on the chart – don’t want to break the flow of conversation and I can see the GPS indicates that we are on track. But then something catches my eye. A smudge on the radar. Not a strong echo, it disappears again, then returns. At first I raise my binoculars, but an alarm bell has set to ringing in my mind. Seeing nothing ahead, I immediately fix the position of the ship on the chart. My heart skips one beat. We are less than two miles from running strait over a rock, charted as breaking the surface. I have picked up the breakers on the radar. In classic text book style, the second mate has made an error entering co-ordinates into the GPS. I have been following the GPS track. We are on the electronic line but not the line as laid off on the chart. Now we are back on track.

We bypassed Singapore straits; turning south to take the short cut through Selat Riau. Not the perfect day for sight seeing; it rained. Still, here is a new passage to ink on my chart – and one I’d happily do again (we were the only ship to go that way). Then at around midnight we went over the hump they call Equator, and who should arrive on board the Rainbow Warrior today but the honoured King and Queen of the region. Shell backs rounded up the pollywogs. They were brought to trial, found guilty and then baptised in a bath of old organic vegetables. We stopped for an hour at the end of the activities for a bathe in the tepid waters of the South China Sea.

Westama passed like a black brick wall, clearing the stern of the Rainbow Warrior by two meters. The tanker, pushed by the current, shoved the tug and the tug, pushed by the tanker, shoved us. They dragged the Rainbow Warrior with her anchor out of the way – it was rude (but a good and safe manoeuvre). Captain of Westama and I made eye contact. We nodded our heads in recognition of a fair game – if only it were all a game. Our orange anchor buoy disappeared with the tanker.

Over the past couple of months the Greenpeace forest defenders have been damming drainage canals in the destroyed peat land forest. Pressure has been mounting – in the lead up to the UN meeting on Climate Change in Bali – for the Indonesian government to put into place a moratorium on forest and peat land conversion to palm oil. The Rainbow Warrior has upped the ante; we are on the front page. The president (SBY) has turned his head to listen. Now we go to Jakarta to talk.

Before breakfast two tugs attached short lines to the Palm Oil Tanker. The tide changed direction at about the same time – bringing weight onto our stern line (attached to the port anchor). We slacked away on this line to form an isosceles triangle between the mooring line from the stern, the anchor cable from the bow and the ship in the middle. The anchor held the Rainbow Warrior like a kite in the current and our stern swung neatly in to face the Westama. We were just 20 meters off the side of the tanker with our engines on half astern into the current and towards the side of the tanker. Westama looked ready to go. I called the captain. I informed him that his undocking was unsafe – he replied that the ship was in the control of port authorities.

A three-hour stand off followed until a tug moved in and pushed us out the way. It wedged itself between Westama and Rainbow Warrior and in a daring move the tanker escaped, coming only 2 meters to the stern of the Rainbow as she did so.