Two Ships
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Mon 17 Oct 2011 11:59
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The container ship Rena is still making all the news. The
storms last week caused it to list a lot more and 80 or so containers ended up
in the sea. The picture below shows it's current position and it looks like a
lot more containers will soon follow if the weather turns bad again,
which it is forecast to do tonight. The storms resulted in more fuel oil
leaking out and it reached the beaches, giving the main beach here a
good coating. This is a holiday resort destination for New Zealanders and
there's lots of wildlife in the area, including penguins. Over 1000
sea birds have died and rescue centres have been set up to clean those they
think they can still save. It's New Zealand's worst maritime
disaster. The leak of oil has been stopped and the beaches
have been mostly cleaned up, but there's still a lot more fuel
oil on board which may come ashore if the ship breaks up, which is likely as it
now has a split down both sides. So with all the likely oil and
containers, the sea is not going to be a good place to be for some time, so just
as well we are still living on the boat ashore. Fingers crossed that it
doesn't break up tonight, but if not tonight it's only a question of time -
no one expects it to ever come off the reef in one piece. We could be
here a while!
 The containers are strapped together which is why
they haven't fallen off, but it doesn't look like
they can stay at this angle for much longer before
they do fall. (Picture courtesy of the Internet)
The other ship is the Maersk Enfield, an even bigger container
ship. The Rena is 764ft long; the Maersk Enfield is a huge 1200ft long - one of
the new super ships that's too big to go through the Panama Canal (Panamax ships
- the maximum size that can fit into the locks - are 965ft long). When we went
through the Canal we passed the construction of new locks that will, in
2014 if all goes to plan, accommodate these ships, the max size then becoming
1200ft. So why is the Maersk Enfield important to us - it contains our
stuff! 3 tea-chest size boxes of things that we sent to New Zealand
by ship. Its last position was in China and all being well it's due to dock
in Auckland later this week.
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