The Otello has just departed Port of Fremantle in Western Australia. I watched as the morning sun lit up the docks and the giraffe-like gantry cranes and this green and white monster slipped out to sea. She has a car carrying capacity of 6,700 and some happy Australians will probably be taking delivery of a new BMW soon. She has sailed off into an approaching storm and as I sit watching this massive vessel disappear over the horizon whilst the swell rolls in at Cottlesloe beach and ominous clouds darken the skies, I’m trying to imagine life at sea.
Daughter Number 2 lives in Fremantle and met our friend the sea captain who lives in Sweden and works for Wallenius Wilhelmsen when she visited Stockholm a few years ago. She is chuffed to be able to tell her Aussie mates that she knows someone who has sailed these big ships into the port she can see from her window. The sea captain is never short of a fascinating maritime story and opens a window of a different kind onto another world with his tales. I love listening to him talk about ports and people and about shipping technicalities and navigating the world’s oceans. It fires my curiosity and fills my head with images of rolling blue-green horizons and far-away destinations; visions and fantasies that have undoubtedly lured travellers to sea for millennia.
The Otello is a long way from home. The Wallenius Wilhelmsen online schedule says she left the German port of Bremherhaven on June 1st and arrived in Fremantle on July 7th. Vessels like the Otello count time in days and months whereas flight schedules count time in mere hours. We left Stockholm on June 19th and arrived in Melbourne on June 20th. Thirty hours door to door. The Otello’s voyage has taken thirty-seven days so far. And she’s not even on her way home yet.
So as my mind follows the Otello and her crew over the horizon and across the Great Australian Bite on their way to Melbourne, I’m thinking that sailors are made of stoic stuff. Despite my romantic imaginings, long periods of time at sea must be incredibly tedious and boring and loved ones must feel a very long way away.
Bon Voyage!
.
"...sailors are made of stoic stuff."
ReplyDeletePlus they're hot. ;)
Otello came to a sad end if your read your Shakespeare. Hope those sailors aren't too obsessed by the lost handkerchiefs of their beloveds. Meanwhile, some of us are reading the fine print on our shopping to make sure we don't import too many things we could be making or growing here in Oz. Obviously BMWs are not in this category (or Volvos if you want to keep the Swedish thing going. I discovered recently that frozen spinach comes from the Netherlands, while I can get very good fresh stuff that grows an hour from Perth. It makes good Indian spinach raita...
ReplyDelete