Mike Mate

She worked in a restaurant on Phu Quoc Island, serving tables. Serving a Hans, at one particular table, who sat alone, poised over a large book titled ‘Vietnam’. He wore headphones, smoked cigarettes and drank beer. She noticed him, not because he was there each night, but because he drank a vast quantity of beer – a dozen would go in a single sitting. Then one day Hans asked Linh how to pronounce a word, he was learning Vietnamese.

The first time she went to the north of the island was on the back of a scooter with her arms wrapped around Hans’ large beer belly. This was shortly followed by her fist trip to the South of Phu Quoc Island with her arms wrapped tighter. And then he took her off the island. Linh’s first trip to Vietnam, to the mainland, was with Hans Monker, by that time they were in love. And her first trip in an airplane was holding Hans’ hand, all the way to Amsterdam – to his motherland. Linh opened hear heart to Hans and Hans opened the door on a world of unlimited potential for Linh. But then he stepped through the door, so far that she could not follow.

Hon Khoai Island lies off the southern tip of the Mekong Delta and is the southern most point of Vietnam.  I fix the position of Rainbow Warrior on the chart using a radar range and visual bearing of the light house, perched on top of the steeply sloped and wooded island.  I then walk around the chart table, check first through the bridge windows to see if there are any fishing boats to starboard and then alter course to the North West, towards Phu Quoc, an island that lies just within the Vietnam side of the border with Cambodia.  The Lonely Planet proclaims that Phu Quoc Island is ringed with the most incredibly beautiful beaches.  It is on one of these beaches that I wish to walk, in the footsteps of Hans Monker.

We are bringing the Rainbow Warrior to the home of our beloved colleague Hans, who sailed his final voyage with me, to Bali, last year.  Hans was on board for the dramatic action we took against a tanker loading Palm Oil in Sumatera – our first double-anchor blockade.  Hans gave all of his love to planet Earth, and then he started sharing it with a woman in Vietnam.  I want to meet this woman who made Hans the happiest man in the world – she lives on Phu Quoc Island, on a beach.

On the bridge, under sail, watching a little Vietnamese fishing boat, painted up in reds and greens, come charging past – quite a  pretty fella.  And there is this rain that has been in the air, has washed out the grey, leaving a turquoise sky, chalky.  The water colour has stripes of shade blue, some from cloud-shadow, but perhaps mostly because it is so shallow (only 30 metres).  We are less than one hundred miles off the mouths of the Mekong River, and sailing along very slowly indeed – its like time has stood still.

Seeing the water spout from dynamite fishing, yesterday, moved me to a very sad place. Perhaps I’m just tired – an intense coastal campaign – but I feel like burying my head in my hands, shrugging my shoulders and just quitting. Maybe dear mother Earth has already been abused too much. Sticks of dynamite into the sea, the last little fish floats belly up – too small to eat. We burn the coal till we cannot see, and then chop down the very last tree?

I’m also sad because of the way we treat each other on our little blue planet – the borders that no man can pass. Immigration in Boracay refused to allow three Filipino and one Indonesian volunteer to sail on board the Rainbow Warrior, to cross the South China Sea. The lady official came on board following strict instruction not to let them sail with us. We called the Chief of Immigration, he hung up the phone. The Typhoon was coming, and we could not wait. Totoi, JP, Willie and Adon, had to pack their bags and get off. Their adventure ended by a little man who had a little power. I don’t understand, must be tired.

Rainbow Warrior bids her final farewell to the Philippines. Her sails are up as she leaves the Sulu sea through the Balabac passage, between Palawan (Philippines) and Sabah (Borneo). There is an island we pass by quite close, crew gaze longingly in its direction wanting to walk. The sun has turned surrounding water to turquoise, the beach gold and white our shapely sails that slide us past. And then…is it a water spout, a water spurt, a geyser, a whale? No, it’s dynamite fishing! A dark shadow hangs low over Paradise Island.

We receive news that the rest of the Greenpeace crew are safe, their phones are working again and they are able to get off Boracay Island. Near to Boracay, the typhoon turned belly up a 23,824-ton ferry boat, mv Princess of the Stars. Not a small-sized vessel and yet it was walloped by strong waves. Sadly with a loss of life of more than 700 people. I count my lucky stars that we got away in time.

We scrabble to the top and career down the other side of waves, 20ft high.  Occasionally the bow of the Rainbow Warrior dips under water whilst her propeller spins in the air behind.  Tops of waves break off like chunks of icing from a cake and travel through the air to smash into the accommodation superstructure, bang, one landed on top of me and Tim laughed from inside the shelter of the bridge. Visibility is zero at times as torrential rain takes the world away and it is so dark.  We are thankful to be on the safe edge of typhoon Fengshen.

I turned the Rainbow Warrior away from Boracay Island and gradually
increased speed allowing the engine to warm up evenly. It was dark and
visibility was reduced by torrential rain. The Marlin, a 50 foot yacht,
called me up and asked for a weather forecast. I read out the position
of Typhoon Fengshen and its predicted path. ‘We’re leaving early’, I
said ‘running before it’. Marlin decided to stay. We made good speed
through the night until the wind shifted in the morning. Now we’re doing
2 knots. But Fengshen did not follow the predicted path, it turned to
head due west and is presently over the top of Boracay Island with winds
of up to 90 knots – we got out just in time.

Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, my feet planted into the fine white beach and the sand between my toes… my first time to feel mother earth in over two months. We’d beached the inflatable on Boracay Island, having left the Rainbow Warrior resting at anchor just beyond the coral reefs. We were waiting for the Mayor to arrive. How many officials does it take to turn on a light bulb – in Boracay it took six – to flick the switch to a solar powered array (installed by the Greenpeace Solar Generation project). Something along the lines of the ‘Energy Efficient Bali’ project, that we launched in December last year at the UNCCC, the leaders of Boracay are realizing the impact of tourist development on this island – which is paradise in the Philippines – and they are willing to paint more green into the picture. It was a positive day and filled with sun, but then the weather changed in the evening – there is a Typhoon heading our way. The authorities are restless – we have had two port-state control inspections in two weeks – there are people in power who want us to go away. We have rocked the boat. The strong wind has come to fill our sails, to take us away, and so we leave the Republic of the Philippines to rise to the challenge of the Warrior: to QUIT COAL.

In the first light of day four, the activists dismantled the Climate Defenders Camp. The rafts were towed back and Rainbow Warrior lifted her anchor, in Guimaras strait, and moved to the general anchorage of Iloilo. Meanwhile, in the town, 20 sacks of coal were dumped in front of Metrobank.  Metrobank is the promoter of the proposed Iloilo City coal-fired power plant and today we asked them to invest in cleaner and safer renewable energy solutions, instead of coal. The mayor of Iloilo does not like us here and has declared to investigate the legality of our international crew protesting on shore in the Philippines, but the Arch Bishop loves us and invited us all to dinner at his palace.

Mum always called it a ‘monkeys wedding’ when the rain fell down and the sun shone at the same time. Today there was one, and whilst it rained and shone I counted one hundred people walking in a line along the shore, towards the Climate Defenders Camp. There were men, women and children and they carried, in outstretched arms, plates of food. The procession looked so peaceful. But then it changed. As they passed the windsocks – that we’d erected in the morning (a symbol of the renewable alternative) – they tore them down. When they came to our banner ‘QUIT COAL’ they tore that down too. This was no picnic, no marriage of like minds. Our camp grew a crowd of chanting “yes to coal, yes to coal”. These where the workers of Panay Power Company and they’d been paid five-hundred pesos each to intimidate us. The police rushed in and stood by to watch. The protest protesters erected a fence of bamboo poles around the camp and then covered it with tarpaulins. They tried to hide our tower, block us out – but the climbers climbed higher.

We kept our position on day three to tell the world that Carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants is the main driver of climate change, representing a major portion of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  Globally, coal accounts for 72% of carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector.  In the Philippines eight coal-fired power plants, with a total capacity of 4,177 MW, or about 26.1% of the country’s installed capacity, currently account for as much as 36% of the emissions from the energy sector.  However, nine more coal-fired plants are up for construction or expansion – one of them right were we are camped.