ODYSSEY 2005

8 Nov – Colombo:

Well, we bypassed Galle, thank god, and ended up in here in Colombo capital of Sri Lanka. We had a bit of cargo suddenly offered, so switched ports, no drama and all the changes went quite smoothly. Actually Colombo isn’t any better than Galle, just bigger, the poverty and grief are the same, with only the international hotels offering anything remotely civilized. I was last here in 1969 – nothing has much changed.

On arrival we gave Buggerlugs and ‘The Idiot’ the task of landing our cargo, cigarettes (but not yet in packets – I wonder what brand will appear on the packets) and some AC equipment from Japan. Then they were to take on whatever the sudden cargo is – don’t know, don’t care. Clive and I then headed for the Taj Samudra Hotel - 5 star. We got two great rooms for the night, had long, long, long showers with real fresh water (didn’t have any smell of oil at all) put on super clean clothes that we bought in the foyer shop and headed for the bar. (BTW I did have a look in at the site but didn’t send anything as it was the reception computer and I shouldn’t have been using it). There is actually a Hilton close by but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Taj, if you can put up with rather opulent British style heavy furnishings with all the trimmings.

After drinks we had a superb dinner, beef curry followed by chicken curry followed by spicy lamb curry – then for dessert English style trifle – as you can probably guess we are both partial to a curry and in the true tradition of things we ate it while enjoying a bottle of Para Port. I think, with the champers, dinner ended up costing around US$850 for the two of us – and I would hate to tell you what our ‘other’ bills came to. Then it was back to the bar, there was a show for the tourists but we bypassed that. I won’t go into the rest of the night because Jim will only delete it anyway – let’s just say a good night was had by all.

We got back to Luna at 10am and were surprised to find that Buggerlugs and the idiot had actually done a good job with the cargo, perhaps there’s hope for them yet. Even Primrose seems to be, at last, getting the idea.

The run from Pt Moresby to here was pretty uneventful once we got out of the bad weather (and I mean reeeeeeeaaaaal bad). We had a competition on lowering the two ships boats – it makes a boat drill more interesting – We had (at the same time) to lower the two boats into the water, motor round the ship lock on and get hauled back into position. I had port Clive had starboard and we won by around 5 secs. They are gravity davits so work on a very simple principal and are easy to maintain.

Because we won Clive suggested a second competition. Two teams of three to a team. Two large mooring lines we streamed from the stern and we had to pull them in by hand with the ship doing 18kts. Guess I should have been paying more attention when it was set up as we lost by 5 mins and were completely knackered by the time we got the line into the ship – reason, the swine had tied a metre bit of flat wood to the end of our line before it was streamed aft – that does tend to make a very big difference.

Even with the stitches in the head I didn’t have one headache, I got them taken out this morning at a proper docs and everything seems to have healed just fine. I have taken a few photos and just hope they all come out but it is not my forte and in this ship cameras are not encouraged. We will be sailing in 3 hours so will nip ashore and get this to Angela (I hope you are all being nice to her – she has long legs).

Then it’s across the Arabian Sea and into the Gulf of Aden – Last time I was here Aden was British, it will be interesting to see how things have gone after independence. Then we will hop overnight to Djibouti for a heap of fuel and fresh water, the water we will have to boil, filter and chlorinate before it can be used for drinking – unless you want to spend the next ten days on the loo. We should be there around the 14th/15th depending on the weather and if we can pick up the stream.

Health is good except for a nagging cough which has probably been brought on by the extremes of the internal air-conditioning and the hot humid air outside; no doubt it will soon pass.

After Djibouti it will be Port Suez and then into the Canal. For me that will end the normal part of the voyage. Once through Suez we will be getting close to the stamping grounds of my youth – The Med, Europe etc and whatever comes next.