The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
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OCE A N S commercial port of Auckland, they just might find that the Harbourmaster, will be left with no option but to impose greater restrictions on vessels racing in the vicinity of shipping movements. QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS HERE NEW VESSEL FOR NZ COAST Pacifica Shipping���s new vessel, the 672-TEU, 2005-built Tini, arrived in Auckland on December 14, 2012. Tini will be renamed Spirit of Independence the 6700-tonne container ship to replace the 1997-built Spirit of Resolution (ex-Pasadena), which has given 15 years service on the New Zealand coast. Carrying nearly 300 more containers and being 40 percent larger than Spirit of Resolution, Tini/Spirit of Independence meets an increasing demand for the transhipment of refrigerated cargo, both domestically and internationally. Pacifica will now utilise the port of Auckland, no longer calling at the port of Onehunga on Auckland���s Manukau Harbour. Tini/Spirit of Independence will sail in conjunction with Spirit of Endurance (ex-CCL Moji), and will make weekly calls at Auckland, Lyttelton, Nelson and New Plymouth. YACHTIES MUST STAY CLEAR Celebrity Solstice, at 316m and 122,000grt, the longest cruise ship to berth at Princes Wharf, sailed from Auckland at 6pm on December 19, 2012, coinciding with the sailing of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron���s last regatta of the year. The harbour was positively packed with sailboats of all sizes. The giant ship was escorted by a police RHIB most of the way out of harbour, intercepted offending yachts en-route. If race organisers cannot plan their race times and courses to allow for the free passage of large ships transiting the (New Zealand Herald, January 13, 1972) A great ship died at Hong Kong this week. But stories of the Queen Elizabeth, most famous of the giant ocean liners, will continue as long as men sail the sea. Some are truth, some are legend: some are a mixture of both. There is the story of her maiden Atlantic crossing for instance. It was late February, 1940; the war was six months old. The Queen Elizabeth, not yet in service, was in the Clyde; her Cunard sister ships, the Queen Mary and the Mauretania, were in New York; and German U-boats and raiders were loose in the Atlantic. New Yorkers were puzzled when the Mauretania left her berth: all Cunard officials would say was that, ���a British ship is nearing New York.��� And on March 7, unannounced, the giant grey-painted liner swept into New York harbour, to secure alongside the Queen Mary. She had crept out of the Clyde, ostensibly for boat drill and crossed the Atlantic, unescorted, under sealed orders at an average speed of 24.25 knots. It was the first of many dangerous wartime voyages ��� including one highly secret visit to Auckland. That was in February, 1942. Before Pearl Harbour, the two Queens, each converted to carry about 6000 troops (compared with normal passenger capacities of about 2200), carried Australian and New Zealand troops to the Middle East, in Indian Ocean convoys. But with the outbreak of war in the Pacific, they were shifted to shuttling many thousands of American troops into the war zone. Their capacity was eventually raised to 15,000 a voyage. The Queen Elizabeth���s unexpected visit to the Hauraki Gulf ��� she was too big to enter the Waitemata Harbour, and in any event security would have made it undesirable ��� was preceded by the arrival of a 5000-ton Greek tanker, the Nicolaou Maria, on an unknown mission. The reason became clear on February 8, 1942, when the giant liner steamed into the gulf, anchored off Tiritiri Island, and refuelled from the waiting tanker. She was on her way the next day, unmentioned in the newspapers but seen by thousands of Aucklanders. After the war, it became known that she was on her way from Sydney to Esquimault, the Canadian naval base at Vancouver, for docking. She was soon back in the Pacific, ferrying troops: but New Zealand was not to see her again. Last year, 30 years later, the visit was to be repeated. As the Seawise University, she was to have come to Marsden Point, Auckland and Picton on a Pacific cruise. The trip was never made. March/April 2013 Professional Skipper 69