It is childish behaviour like his that gives the civilized world the shits about the ‘Peoples Republic of Cunts’ a.k.a. China.

Pissing off the US by not letting their fleet into Hong Kong for a scheduled visit on Thanksgiving is one thing, and just shows how childish these ‘people’ are. Denying ships in distress access for shelter is something that would outrage any mariner, not just me. And this is the ‘country’ we gave the Olympics to! When will we come to senses, and stop these criminals? If there was ever need for a ‘regime change’, then it would be here.

US Pacific Commander Criticizes China on Naval Issue

By Al Pessin
Pentagon
27 November 2007

The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific has criticized China for denying three U.S. Navy ships access to Hong Kong Harbor in recent weeks, saying the decisions were not responsible. The commander spoke with reporters at the Pentagon via satellite from his headquarters in Hawaii. VOA’s Al Pessin reports.

Admiral Timothy Keating said the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and its support ships were scheduled to visit Hong Kong over the American Thanksgiving holiday last week, but Chinese authorities denied permission to enter the city’s harbor at the last minute.

“This is perplexing. It’s not helpful,” he said. “It is not, in our view, conduct that is indicative of a country that understands its obligations as a responsible nation.”

The admiral says hundreds of family members of the task force’s crew had flown to Hong Kong at their own expense to meet the ship and spend the holiday with their loved ones. He says China later granted permission for the Kitty Hawk to visit, but by then the ship had changed course and it was too late to return.

Admiral Keating says another incident a few days earlier was even more disturbing. He says two small Navy ships that hunt for mines at sea were caught in an unexpected storm and asked for permission to enter Hong Kong Harbor for safety. China denied the request and the ships rode out the storm at sea.

“This is a kind of an unwritten law among seamen that if someone is in need, regardless of genus, phylum or species, you let them come in,” he said. “You give them safe harbor. So this is an area that causes us a little more concern. And that is behavior that we do not consider consonant with a nation who advocates a ‘peaceful rise’ and harmonious relations.”

Admiral Keating said he hopes the difficulty with access to Hong Kong Harbor does not continue, and he says U.S. officials will address the issue with their Chinese counterparts. He says he does not want to reduce military cooperation with China, but rather to increase dialogue and joint training in order to avoid misunderstandings in the future.

“We are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to work our way around some of these aggravations, if you will,” he said. “We hope none of the aggravations are from us. We think they’re all from them. As the Olympics loom larger and the summer of 2008 comes upon us, we are hopeful that the behavior of the Chinese will be more like that of other responsible countries.”

The admiral reported he hopes to make his second official visit to China in January, during which he said he will discuss the access issue, as well as concerns he has about the expansion of Chinese military capabilities, some of which he says indicate “a little more aggressive strategic goal” than China has publicly stated.

He referred specifically to new weapons, training programs, a naval expansion and improvements in Chinese air-to-air combat skills. The admiral also repeated concerns about potential military applications of China’s space program, including its anti-satellite weapon and apparent lack of concern about the space debris the weapon’s test caused in January.

End of October I posted my last update about my Dix 43 project. At that stage I reluctantly had decided to have it built in Guangzhou, China. A part of me was never happy with this choice. Having lived here for 14 years, I know that quality would always be a challenge. Another issue is the import duties and import VAT which are not exactly low in China. On a project of this size this is a serious amount of money, which I rather spend on first class equipment and outfitting.

Since my last post much has happened. I posted earlier about the web site of Wynand Nortje covering steel boat building. Wynand has built 18 steel hull boats so far, amongst which several Dudley Dix designs. Well, to make a long story short, Wynand offered to build my Dix 43, and I happily accepted his offer. Wynand has of course lots of experience himself as a builder of steel boats, but also South Africa has a highly skilled labour force at a comparatively cheap price level. Furthermore South Africa has a boat building industry with a history, and a well developed supply chain.

The boat will be built in Welkom in Free State. Welkom is about 290 km from Johannesburg on the way to Cape Town, and about 560 km from Durban. I am flying to South Africa for a week in December to discuss final details with Wynand and get everything started. Needless to say, I am very excited!

I also have a name for my boat. Her name will be ‘Waratah’, after the state flower of New South Wales.

A very useful maritime weather site is PassageWeather.com

It’s a valuable tool to help sailors with their passage planning and weather routing. The site provides for every area the surface wind, surface barometric pressure, and wave height and direction forecasts. I like the animations in 3 hour intervals. The forecast images can be downloaded as a *.zip file.

It could have been an advertisement for steel hull boats. This steel hull yacht was rammed by a freighter off the Canary Islands. The French crew of three were unharmed, and were able to jury-rig a mast and make it to the port of Las Palmas. Had they been sailing in Tupperware, I doubt they would have lived to tell. Needless to say, my boat is going to have a steel hull.

From November 27 - 30 Shanghai will host the bi-annual Marintec exhibition again. The Marintec 2007 will be held in the Shanghai New International Expo Centre in Pudong.

Since the first exhibition in 1981, the Marintec has been steadily growing. My first time at the Marintec was in 1999, as an exhibitor. Then it was still held in the old exhibition centre on Nanjing Road, opposite Shanghai Centre (Portman Hotel).

The previous exhibition in 2005 showed more than 1000 exhibiting companies from 28 countries on an area of 27,000 sqm, and attracted more than 30,000 visitors.

A good friend of mine has been married to a Chinese lady for many years. They used to live in Shanghai, and moved a few months ago to Bahrain. We are still regularly in touch by email, and this was the mail I received this afternoon:

Since being in Bahrain and being exposed to “free” internet (we thought!), my wife has embarked on an exercise to investigate stories she has heard such as Tiannamen Square, forced abortions, arresting people for opinion, etc., but has never been able to confirm whilst living in China. I set her up with BBC China which is banned in China and we could never get before. From here she searched the links and in her endeavours she found a Chinese blog site from a former Shanghai resident now in Canada, that has links to research all the top topics. She sent this link via MSN messenger to her friend in Shanghai and they began to discuss what the wife had found there, and why the Shanghai girl could not access the site. Yesterday morning surfing the news over coffee her computer crashed and revealed a message in Chinese that told her she was accessing illegal web sites, and that the authorities were now tracking her. She was panicked at first and it took me 4 hours last night, nursing the computer while we watched TV, to run all the spy eraser, anti spam and virus removal tools i had to [use to] clear our tracks. She can now get on to BBC China, Yahoo China, and sina.com again but obviously she is too scared to revisit the blog site.

The long arm of communist control stretched to Bahrain - and gave us a scare!

The only cat ever to be awarded the “animals’ Victoria Cross” is to be remembered at a ceremony on Thursday.

Royal Navy officers are paying tribute to Simon the cat, a rat-catcher on the frigate Amethyst which continued its duties despite being hit by shrapnel and singed during shelling raids by Chinese communists on the Yangtze River in 1949.

The cat stuck to its task despite injury during the 101-day summer siege that followed.

During the initial bombardment and subsequent rescue attempts by three other Royal Navy vessels, 46 men were killed. More than 50 men remained on board after the Amethyst was struck and ran aground on a mud bank.

The communists withheld supplies for more than three months while they used the ship as a political bargaining chip. But the black and white cat kept up morale and the crew credited it with saving their lives by protecting dwindling food stores from a rat infestation.

After the boat made a daring night-time dash for freedom in late July, news of Simon’s exploits during what became known as the “Yangtze Incident” spread.

Lt-Cdr Stewart Hett was even appointed “cat officer” to deal with the hundreds of letters of fan mail. The Amethyst returned to Portsmouth on Nov 1 1949, by which time Simon was a celebrity. But it died in quarantine a few weeks after the ship docked. The cat officially died of injury complications, but crew insisted the lonely animal died of a “broken heart”.

It was posthumously awarded the Dickin medal —the highest military accolade an animal can receive — by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA).

The honour has also been granted to 62 animals including 32 Second World War messenger pigeons, three horses and 26 dogs — but Simon is the first cat to receive it. The cat was buried with full military honours at the PDSA’s Animal Cemetery in Ilford, Essex. Former naval officers will lay wreaths at the cat’s grave today, at a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the ship’s safe return.

Cdr Hett, now 81, who will lead the wreath-laying, said: “Simon’s company and expertise as a rat-catcher were invaluable during the months we were held captive.

“During a terrifying time, he helped boost the morale of many young sailors, some of whom had seen their friends killed. Simon is still remembered with great affection.”

Marilyn Rydström, the PDSA’s director general, said: “There is no doubt that Simon was special to the crew of HMS Amethyst.

“The fact his name and story live on helps ensure that the men who sadly lost their lives in the incident are also not forgotten.

“The power of animals to sustain morale in times of conflict can never be underestimated.”

It is fascinating how the ancient Polynesians were able to navigate accurately over long distances, without compasses or clocks. I found the following interesting article in the Telegraph:

A stone tool found on a remote Pacific island has provided evidence that early Polynesians travelled 2,500 miles by canoe using only the stars, clouds and seabirds as navigational aids.

Scientists have found that the stone adze, found on a coral atoll in what is now French Polynesia, was quarried from volcanic rock in Hawaii, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

It was transported about 1,000 years ago by Polynesian voyagers in wooden canoes, either as a chunk of uncut rock used for ballast, or as a gift or memento.

Its Hawaiian provenance confirms what Pacific peoples have long been told through folklore - that their ancestors were among the most skilled navigators in history.

Archaeologists and historians have likened their ability to find new islands in the vastness of the Pacific as akin to sending a rocket into space and hoping it will hit a planet.

Dr Marshall Weisler, of the University of Queensland, said the journey between Hawaii and Tahiti “now stands as the longest uninterrupted maritime voyage in human prehistory”.

He said it was “mind-boggling” how Polynesian settlers found their way from one speck of land to another and back again, colonising the last uninhabited parts of the planet.

They are believed to have used signs such as tides, the presence of driftwood and the flight of seabirds, which return to roost on land at night.

They also closely observed the underside of clouds, which reflect whatever lies beneath them - a darker tinge indicates the presence of land.

Proving that such a feat was possible, in 1976 a reconstructed ocean-going canoe, the Hokule’a, successfully sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti.

The adze was found by an archeologist in the 1930s on a coral island in the Tuamotu archipelago in French Polynesia, but has only recently been subjected to chemical testing.

It started its journey on Kaho’olawe island in Hawaii. “Before beginning their voyage south from Hawaii, the ancient voyagers most likely stopped at the westernmost tip of the island, traditionally named Lae o Kealaikahiki, which literally means ‘the cape or headland on the way to Tahiti’,” Dr Weisler said.

“Here they apparently collected rocks, like that from which the adze was subsequently made, to take on their voyage, either as ballast or as a gift.”