Working Port

With all the sailboats and blue-green water of the Coral Sea, it's easy to forget that Port Moresby is also a working port. We can watch all the container ships arriving with their goods from Australia and China. We also hear them in the middle of the night. If there is no one to receive their lines, they will blast the ships whistle until someone shows up.

I can watch the PNG Navy at work as well. They have 4 patrol boats and 2 landing craft, all of which were donated by the Australian Navy.

Watching the kids learn to sail with the local sail club is more enjoyable though.

During the recent Pacific Island forum, this luxury yacht took the spouses of the various dignitaries out for a harbour cruise.

A funny side note about the Pacific Island Forum, the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott spoke at a breakfast event on the last day of the forum and Lori was there to represent her company. A couple of days later, Tony's own party turfed him out so Lori heard his last public words as Prime Minister.

We get to see some strange things as well, like this guy who came up with a rather ingenious way to scrape the hull of his sailboat.

He tied up to the pilings at high tide and when the tide went out, his boat was left high and dry. I was impressed with his ingenuity but there is no way I would go underneath that boat while it was resting on its precarious perch.

There has been a small cargo ship at anchor for a few weeks now. I couldn't figure out what it was doing there, so I finally dug out the binoculars to look up the name on the hull and then I did a quick Google search.

I discovered that it's called the Blissful Reefer and it's owned by a Thai fishing company. It's been seized by the PNG government because it was used in a slave fishing ring. Apparently men from Myanmar and Cambodia are coerced on board with promises of jobs in Thailand and then are forced to fish. From what I read, 8 of these fishermen were rescued from this ship and the investigation is ongoing, so the boat continues to sit in the harbour.

I don't know if it's nostalgia left over from my Navy days, but I love living on the waterfront.

db