Blog on a summer break!

Blog en vacances!

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Blog will be joining the annual European exodus to the seaside and will be posting only intermittently during the summer holidays; will be back on a more regular basis in September.

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Happy summer holidays to one and all!

Tall ships photo album

Check out Rouen Armada 2008 photo album

Armada 2008 and 14 juillet celebrations in Rouen

In Rouen, attending Armada 2008 and celebrating 14 juillet festivities ... will be blogging a bit more and posting pictures I took of the fabulous and beautiful tall ship parade in Rouen when I get back to home base this week...

For starters, here is a picture of one of the most fabulous tall ships in the parade... and a snapshot (stolen shot actually) of the Polish Navy cadets on the deck of the Polish tall ship participating in the Armada 2008.

Cheers!

(The Philippines is not represented and understandably so... Philippine Navy has floating bathtubs but not tall ships; corruption in the Philippines at all levels makes it difficult for the nation to have a proper navy, let alone own a tall ship.)

Click on the photos to enlarge. Crossposted from Hillblogger 3.

Joining 'Stop Sulpicio Lines blogswarm'!

On a break in the northwest of France but have taken time out to take a peak at some of my usual blog haunts.

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Have just learned that Nick of Tingog.com and of Filipino Voices has called for blogswarm against Sulpicio Lines, reported to control about 40 percent of the passenger and cargo market in domestic shipping, has unbelievable 4 sea tragedies under their belt.

With such a record, it is fiiting to call Sulpicio Lines the floating graveyard diggers of the Philippine seas. And yet, they have been allowed and are still allowed to operate and to make profit!

I thought the latest Sulpicio Lines disaster would force Philippine authorities to ground the Sulpicio Lines and to examine the seaworthiness of their vessels, review Sulpicio Lines crew seamanship, and more importantly, to investigate maritime officials (and politicians) who may be in collussion with Sulpico Lines owners before allowing their vessels to ply the Philippine seas again. Smacks of common sense, don't you think?

But guess what? I just learned that no less than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who had just arrived from her official good time and shameless junket in the US (while hundreds of thousands of her fellowmen were either homeless, missing, dying or dead in the aftermath of typhoon Frank) had given the Sulpicio sea graveyard diggers and murderers full authority to continue operating again.

How dastardly!

I am joining Nick's blogswarm and agree with him en toto:

When a company has racked up the deaths of thousands of innocent Filipinos, the time must come when they should start paying for their actions.

Related MBW blog posts:

• Salvaging a shipwreck
• Sulpicio Lines is not God and can be brought down!
• Little chance of finding survivors in the Sulpicio Lines sea graveyard
• Sulpicio Lines' Princess of the Stars is Philippines' Titanic
• Update on the latest Sulpicio Lines sea tragedy
• A disaster at sea that could have been avoided

Ingrid Betancourt is free

Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped and kept in captivity by Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for six long years is now free. Two American nationals were released along with Ms Betancourt who holds dual citizenship, French-Colombian. She was running for Colombian presidency when she was kidnapped.

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"Je rêve d'être en France" (I dream of being in France) were among the first words Ingrid Betancourt (shown with her mother) said at a military tarmac in Bogota before boarding the French Air Force Plane that will certainly take her back to France.

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Ingrid's son, daughter and sister were at the Palais de l'Elysée (Presidential palace) today at a press conference. They thanked President Sarkozy profusely saying that things changed for their mother when the French president took matters in hand. I agree. President Sarkozy worked tirelessly for her release and kept his promise.

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I was one of the signatories of the petition back in 2004 for the release of Ingrid Betancourt. I'm happy for her and her family who never lost faith that one day, she would be released. Welcome home, Ingrid!

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Cross posted in Hillblogger.

Salvaging a shipwreck

Sulpicio blocks option to refloat capsized ferry banners The Daily Tribune

With an intact hull, the submerged M/V Princess of the Stars can easily be refloated to speed up the retrieval of the dead trapped in it but Sulpicio Lines, the owner of the sunken ferry, does not want to do this because it would not be able to claim full damages from insurers, a maritime official told Agence France Presse yesterday.

There are national maritime laws and there are international laws that govern the seas. I am not a lawyer but I know this much: If the owners of a vessel are deemed to have abandoned ship, i.e., no captain to man the ship, the crew have abandoned ship that's been either shipwrecked or in peril, then it's good for salvage. It may be done at night away from the prying eyes. Various types of "peril", the most common cases of which involve abandoned ships or ships in danger of sinking.

The UN Laws of the Seas covering salvages stipulate that salvage may occur in international waters but because she's already shipwrecked and a threat to traffic at sea, not sure if MV Princess of the Stars is not ripe for salvaging, i.e., with or without the agreement of the owners, under the rules.

Given that the ship is technically abandoned by the owners and since there is no crew to man it, to keep the wolves -- or sea vultures so to speak at bay, perhaps, there is a little opening there no matter how microscopic, which current rescuers, potential salvagers and authorities could use in order to bypass Sulpicio Lines approval or non-approval not to tamper with her so that those actively involved in the rescue/retrieval operations may do what is necessary to retrieve the dead and to limit the risks of the toxic pesticide MV Princess of the Stars' is carrying polluting the sea.

If the owners refuse to do what is necessary for rescuers to access the belly of the ship, i.e., pump air and water into her in the hope of tilting her the right way up, or to use buoyancy bags to keep her from sublerging entirely, then how can the rescue and retrieval operators do their job? It is utterly indecent to leave the bodies of the victim to the mercy of the fishes in the sea and at the same time, the toxic cargo risks infecting or contaminating the entire water area in Romblon.

Not easy but something has got to be done, firstly as a respect for the dead and secondly, to avert a possible environmental catastrophe.

The current rescue/salvaging debacle in the Philippines reminds me of a salvaging anecdote:

One Sunday morning in November 1996, my husband and I were doing a sailing exercise aboard our 30-footer boat in the Southwest of France when we spotted the silhouette of a mastless boat in the horizon. There had been a storm the day before and the sea wasn't exactly very calm yet but heck, we like that kind of weather so off we sailed. The sailboat was drifting, potentially shipwrecked, perhaps a victim of the previous day's storm. Instinctively, we sailed towards the vessel and by then, we were definitely way out in the large, open sea. We reached her and called out but no reply.

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My husband boarded the vessel and announced that the boat was defintiely shipwrecked. It had a broken mast, a damaged deck and if left to the vagaries of the sea, could very well end up completely wrecked. My husband who knows about boats, professionally that is, said that she was no more than 10 years old. Overall, with a bit of repair, the boat could be saved and would be in good nick in no time at all.

We found her drifting, unmanned and in the open sea and we knew that if we wanted to keep her, she was ours. Just the same, as soon as we were able to, we made the necessary declarations to the to the port authorities of the find (an important thing to do in order to lay claim on future ownership of the boat by salvage if we decided to) and asked them to find the names of the people under whom the boat may be registered...

The police rang a week later to say they had found the "owners" of the boat and gave us their phone number. The "owners" came over to meet us at the port, thanked us curtly for "finding" the boat, and without much ado, virtually waved us off, thinking perhaps that we were just silly lil Sunday sailors which I definitely was and still am, but my husband was and is a different kettle of fish altogether (a real professional) -- they got ready to board her by rushing to the gangplank.

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Peeved by the curt, presumptuous, discourteous attitude bordering on the aggressive of the 2 men who declared themselves the "owners," we invoked the laws of the waves. We told them quite bluntly that the vessel was now ours having salvaged her in the open sea but we were willing to part with her if they would pay us compensation for our efforts which we deserved.

I had an inkling that the discussion was not going to be pretty so with not a second lost, I rushed past them on the gangplank and boarded the vessel. The little group followed but I was quicker and from the deck, I said quite loudly and in fluent French (which frankly surprised them as the rather tense exchange had been going on in English) that their behaviour was not acceptable and that I was going to scuttle her. My oldest son had also joined me on the boat leaving my husband and the two men behind.

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That stopped the would be bullies dead in their tracks. The long and short of it was that they became less aggressive. They knew we were well within our right to claim ownership or compensation at the very least for having salvaged her and so cooled down. My husband was more conciliatory but not me -- I didn't like the men's attitude, their curt thank you, their discourteous behaviour bordering on the aggressive and told them so.

They had assumed (and rightly so) that they stood no chance of fighting it out with us based on the law of salvage at sea if we enforced our rights, hence had opted to adopt the strong-arm tactic with us from the beginning (pirate attitude) as some kind of defensive mechanism, instead of being gracious, an attitude towards my husband, myself and my son who was present that I did not, but did not appreciate at all! So, off the cuff, I added in French quite clearly and firmly from aboard the boat that to make things easy for them, I was willing to sell her back to them at half her valuation price. That stunned them. They retorted, "Quoi? Ca va pas?" (What? Are you crazy?) Maybe so, but the boat was mine until my efforts were compensated.

I said (still in French), "Take it or leave it but you have an hour to think about it. The vessel will stay where she is and if you try to board her, I will have you arrested, that is if I haven't scuttled her yet."

Well, the story ended well -- they compensated us -- or rather their insurance company paid up -- with almost a 4th of the valuation of the vessel.

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Nope, we didn't keep the money. We asked them to write out the check to the French Lifeboat Society. We donated the proceeds of our very first private, amateur salvaging efforts to the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer of which my husband and I and the children are great supporters.

It has occurred to me that the anecdote might sound banal, but to me, receiving compensation for my own contribution to an amateur salvaging effort, and donating the proceeds to one of the family's favourite non-profit Lifeboat Associations was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

Note: I might not be able to post during the next 3 weeks; will be travelling -- first to Brittany to check on the home renovation front there and then to Rouen to attend the 14th of July Tall Ships/Armada parade; will be returning to home base after a brief visit to family in England. And guess what! We will be crossing La Manche on a RORO ferry...

Makapal (Shameless)!

Today's Inquirer Editorial sums up how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been behaving in the US. Gloria did not only embarass Barack Obama but also quite pathetically, the entire nation for being so disgustingly thick-faced and unbelievably shameless... Pathetic!

Editorial
Embarrassing
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:26:00 06/28/2008

MANILA, Philippines—Administration officials probably saw nothing wrong with it, but President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s determined—and ultimately futile—pursuit of Sen. Barack Obama made a number of Filipinos cringe in embarrassment.

The President was originally reported to have a meeting with the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president last Wednesday in New York, but the site was later changed to Washington, D.C., a convenient change for Ms Arroyo who was winding up her official visit to the US capital on that day. Wednesday came and went, but there was no Obama. (He was said to be on the other side of the United States, in Hollywood, attending a fund-raising event.) That night Ms Arroyo left for New York, where she later learned Obama would meet with her in Washington Thursday. There was talk Ms Arroyo might skip some of her scheduled activities in New York, including a meeting with foreign diplomats assigned to the United Nations, to fly backto Washington for the meeting with Obama. But again the meeting was called off. As a consolation, the senator from Illinois on Thursday gave her 30 minutes of his time—on the telephone.

Thus, the President of the Philippines ended up looking like the pesky little fly that needed to be thrown sweet nothings just so she would get out of the way of somebody who is not even president (yet) of his country. If Ms Arroyo and her advisers didn’t find it improper or even demeaning to be so inordinately eager to see Obama, there are others who did. The President cannot behave like a love-struck teenager, willing and ready to do everything and drop anything, including her dignity, just to see her idol.

It is hard to believe that Obama or his people could be so insensitive and undiplomatic as to call off at the last minute a scheduled meeting with a foreign head of state. That simply isn’t done, except if there is an emergency or unless someone wants to signal extreme displeasure. What most likely happened was that arrangements were made for a possible meeting and nothing definite was agreed upon, but some presumptuous Palace officials took the meeting as a done deal. Thus, on the eve of the President’s departure, the Philippine consul general in San Francisco, Ambassador Marciano Paynor Jr., announced that Obama and his Republican rival Sen. John McCain had “shown interest” in meeting with Ms Arroyo and that indeed the meetings had been confirmed.

But after finding out that no firm date had been set for the Arroyo-Obama meeting, why didn’t the President’s men just hide their disappointment instead of continuing to fish for a meeting? Better still, why didn’t Ms Arroyo simply cut her trip short and go home to attend to the many things needing her attention in the face of the deaths and destruction wreaked by Typhoon Frank? Nobody would have noticed this misunderstanding with the Obama camp (if that was what it was) had she simply flown back to personally take charge of emergency relief operations.

She already got what she wanted from the visit: a reaffirmation of her friendship with US President George W. Bush and high praise from him for her campaign against terrorism. But apparently she wanted to blunt criticism about firming up relations with a lame-duck president by starting new personal relationships with his likely successors. She didn’t quite succeed (at least as far as Obama is concerned), and instead embarrassed herself and the nation.

Arrest Brenda Defensor for terrorism

Hahahahah! Brenda is at it again.

Santiago: 'I may run for president to terrorize foes'

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It's time to put those RP anti-terrorist laws to good use. Arrest this self-confessed terrorist!