ports and such...

All this business going on with the ports of Auckland has really given me a bit of a wind up lately.  To be fair I have really done my best not to comment on it because to be honest there is really no good going to come of me saying anything.  But then I started seeing all this stuff misrepresenting people in the papers and I started to get frustrated about it, I got a bit wound up when I heard the New Zealand Herald write that wharfies were getting paid nearly 100k a year to do 28 hours work a week.  I got even more wound up when It was reported  that they were going on strike yet again because they weren’t happy with the money they were earning or the 10% pay rise they had been offered. 

I hate Wharfies, and to be honest compared to everyone else you talk to I actually have first-hand experience with them.  I work with them pretty closely from time to time and have a fair idea what their habits are like.  To be honest I find wharfies in general some of the most regimentally lazy people I have ever met. They are slow.  They take their union negotiated breaks like clockwork, even if a ship needs to leave the wharf in a hurry while it is paying a couple of thousand dollars a day in wharf fees; they don’t really seem to care.  The world stops when the Wharfies stop.  Here in Australia, I have seen fights break out between ratings onboard and the wharfies when they are too slow to get to the wharf and our boys have to put the lines on themselves.  The wharfies demand that they get to do their job.  Or else why are they there? That would pretty much defeat the point of being employed they said.  Bloody wharfies. 

But then I started thinking.

I’m in a union.  My union looks after me when I have problems with the company I work for; they use the collective power to bargain for what is genuinely a fair agreement.  I get looked after well for what I do and a lot of people sometimes get a bit of a bee in their bonnet about it.  How is it fair that you only work six months a year but you get a year’s pay they say? Why do you get paid more than the average person does in New Zealand? You’re so lucky to be able to travel for a job.  The fact is that my union actually negotiated my wage  My union has fought tooth and nail for years and years to achieve the conditions under which I am employed.  After the novelty wears off the travelling. Once the time has dragged on and I’m 3 weeks into a 5 week trip.  When the ship has been rolling heavily for days on end; when I get home and can’t sleep properly for a week.  I start to get some kind of comprehension as to why my union negotiated so hard for the conditions I have.  I need them.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be out here for 6 months of the year; it just wouldn’t be worth all the down sides.  See I don’t get the daily luxury of driving home at the end of the day and giving my wife a kiss on the cheek.  Pulling a beer out of the fridge and flopping down on the couch to watch some crappy TV.  Because I’m on a boat.  Strangely enough; neither do the guys that are working down on the wharves, they are working round the clock shifts and overtime.  As it is, it pretty much negates any chance of getting a normal routine going.  So what would happen if they lost the right to having some sort of notice of hours worked?   Most of the guys working down there have been there for years and although they are well qualified, they are only qualified at a very niche job.

 It is known here that people working high above are trying to erode the union I work for so they can bring in cheap labour from overseas and I suppose pocket the difference themselves.   I am by no means a unionist.  I get frustrated by a lot of the petty things that unions end up fighting over.  But I do believe that unions can do some good in situations like the one unfolding at the ports of Auckland. 

I am only commenting on what I have seen through papers and the union website etc, but from the looks of it the ports of Auckland (driven by the new Super city council) are trying to remove the union from their workplace by systematically undermining their presence and denying their right to negotiate. 

All this is frustrating, if not just down-right despicable the path that the port are taking.  I think that the thing people miss here is that they are not really that interested in what is happening to the workers, they are trying to set a precedent and a very bold one at that!  If they can break the union here, if they can get them to bend to their will, it will have a resounding echo through all other unionised industries throughout NZ.  By undermining the workers who are involved in the union, the preference that should be given to their workers in the agreement (that is soon to be null and void),  can be given to people outside the union.  What makes this really frustrating is this : how many people in Auckland are qualified to work on the wharves?   Not very many I would wager, so who will fill the spots on the contracting crews? ?  more than likely the guys who are in the union.  Maybe not straight away, but in time they will anyways.  So is this a blatant move by the company to chop their workers pay ? I say yes. 

What really gets to me is that AFFCO actually lost a very similar case in court not long ago after something like 65 days of lockouts that never made it to the news like the ports did.  AFFCO were undermining the union by giving work to workers not in the union and thus defeated the purpose of the union.   The court ruled that they were not allowed to do this as they had a signed agreement with the unionised workers.   The only difference in these two situations is the fact that the Maritime union is in the midst of negotiating a new contract.   The fundimentals are the same, undermine the union, give preference to non unionised members who will work in worse conditions for less pay. That is the first step, what will follow will be a lack of union presence and individual contracts, disallowing workers from being able to easily negotiate a fair wage as they will be negotiating individually against a very big company. 

I could prattle on for hours and hours about why the ports have ended up in this position, about how competing ports are under cutting each other and everything that goes with it.  But I think I have had enough of a rant for now.  I am interested in hearing your thoughts on it too.  

Betty Benz

A few months ago while i was blabbering on about how sad it was that i had sold my BMW i made the decision to buy myself another car to entertain myself with.

I ended up buying a very rare very sexy very very cool, sexy very sexy classic mercedes. 



I found the car on a local auction site after having test driven a number of old Merc's.  Some good, some not so good, some so bad i walked away in disgust at the state the owners had let their cars get to. 

So after setting a budget I stumbled across the ad on the web and pretty much doubled what I had just allowed.

The gentleman who answered the phone was pretty upfront about the car, told me he loved it blah blah blah, the usual, well aside from the slurring it was the usual.  He told me to hurry the fuck up as it was getting dark and was about a half hour drive from town (at about 130kph)

Once we finally made it out to the house it was pretty much dark.  However the sight that greeted us was almost a deal maker for me.  There stood the owner Alex, leaning against the car, very full glass of red wine in hand.
One of the first things that he said to me is if i dont like you, i wont sell it to you. 

What can i say, Alex was a champion.  Took us for a drive completely shitfaced.  Asked for the money in hundred dollar bills which turned out to be a considerable wad of notes. Sold her to me on the conditions that i had to keep a packet of smokes in the car at all times and that i had to keep the name.  Sealed the deal with a fucking expensive glass of Scotch and then proceeded to pay the fine i got on the way home (136 in a 100 zone).  The rest is history.


I have been doing a fair bit of work on her over the last few weeks. 
with alot more money and time to be spent on her in the future as well... consider the rest a pictoral blog.

This is putting the original stereo back in the normal slot and rewiring the real working stereo into the glove compartment, ready for the subs and horrendously expensive front speakers to go in next

How to talk like a sailor

Its interesting the people who you come across while you are working.

Cue interesting conversation with fellow shipmate. 

Me –  “ fellow crewmate what did you used to do before you ended up on here?”

Fellow crewmate – “I was a fisherman, I used to fish in the Bering sea near Russia”

Me – “cool, what were you fishing for ?”

Fellow crewmate – “Whales”

Another one of the guys who looks after the seismic gear is an ex Submariner from England, who would often come up to the ECR (engine control room) in the wee hours of the morning and chew the fat for a while. 

Have learned some interesting things about the Royal navy in subsequent conversations...

Seafaring is an strange occupation in that there is so much that goes on effectively behind the scenes.  People really have no idea about alot of the things that we do and I guess to a certain degree it must be a little bit mysterious as to what we actually “do” while we are at sea for 6 months of the year.  In recent years seafaring has changed alot in regards to conditions onboard the ships and the areas in which they operate.  Which has, I suppose changed they way we do things, for example on the ship im working on at the moment, the engine room is completely automated.  Engines start and stop as they are required and literally everything can be controlled by a computer system.  In the old days if an engine broke down while it was running it would most certainly mean the lights would all go out.  Now; unless you are the engineer on duty, you would never even know anything had gone wrong.

On the other hand some things at sea don’t change alot and tradition is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many of the seafarers I have met.  There are alot of sayings and phrases that are a bit foreign to someone new to the industry. So, me being such a stand up guy have thrown together a few words to help you should you come face to face with a seafarer such as myself and you dont want to miss out on the riveting stories that we are known to tell of far off worlds and rough oceans.

How to talk like a Sailor

Al Capone – Telephone

Up the road – Bar (up the road to the frog and toad)

Dhoby – Washing

Turn to – Start work

Ginger beer – engineer

Shifter – Cresent wrench


Split something - open up machinery


Box something up - Put it back together


Toss off - do nothing


Break your balls - do something quickly


Got your papers - Have sailed over the Equator and have written proof signed by the Captain


Old Man - Captain


Donkey - Engine


Wave your ticket at it - Fix something someone ranked lower than you couldn't


Job and Knock - When the job is finished, you are finished


Now you know the basics you can throw a few swear words in there and bada bing you are off.


a few easy ones you can practise are: 


"The fuckin old man is busting my balls about ......"


"Job and knock, then fuck off up the road with the other ginger beers for a couple of brews"


and lastly one to practise for a while.   It takes a bit of conviction to pull it off...


"This is the third fucking time i have split that fucking purifier, if it doesnt get boxed up properly this time if gonna smash the fucking cu*t of a thing"


So as you may have noticed swearing is a big part of my job, it makes me feel good, gets frustration out and also makes me feel like i have power over something that is clearly getting the better of me. 


Many other sayings are also comprised in some way or misquoted from nautical sayings.

Such as the old, enough room to swing a cat.  People seem to think that you are expected to actually grab the family feline by the tail and I suppose test the available area in the room by rotating the by now distraught feline friend through a circular motion above and around your head.  You can imagine the results if your calculations were slightly off and there was infact NOT enough room to “swing a cat”.

The actual term comes from the olden days when lashings were commonplace and men were made of steel and ships made of wood.

The phrase goes “enough room to swing a cat o’ nine tails”

A cat of nine tails is a whip made out of rope with small knots on the end of which has as you can imagine nine tails. The original idea I was brought up with was that the sailor whom was to have the lashings inflicted was to make his own cat, this was because if you made a poor job of it the whip would do much more damage so it was in his best interests to make it as well as he possibly could. The Whip ended up being more than a metre long by the end of it so required a fair amount of space to swing.  

So the next time you are thinking of swinging a cat, leave puss alone!

Another one that I commonly hear misused is “approaching at a great speed of knots”

This is actually misquoted from the proper saying “approaching at a great rate of knots” which is from memory commonly used in lord Nelsons time when talking about ships approaching etc.

“Tow the line” which I can only imagine people are using to try to explain keeping up with a minimum level as people say things like “only do enough to tow the line”, where infact the general term really came from the old wooden sailing ships where the space between each pair of deck planks was filled with a packing material called caulking and then sealed with a mixture of pitch and tar. The result, from afar, was a series of parallel lines a half-foot or so apart, running the length of the deck. Once a week on Sunday, a warship's crew was ordered to fall in at quarters - that is, each group of men into which the crew was divided would line up in formation in a given area of the deck. To insure a neat alignment of each row, the Sailors were directed to stand with their toes just touching a particular seam. Another use for these seams; The cadet officers might be required to stand with their toes just touching a designated seam for a length of time as punishment for some minor infraction of discipline, such as talking or fidgeting at the wrong time. A tough captain might require them to stand there, not talking to anyone, for hours at a time. Hopefully, he would learn it was easier and more pleasant to conduct himself in the required manner rather than suffer the punishment.  Saving him from having to “toe the line”.


Another interesting one that is actually used correctly is "Dressed to the Nines" but its a pretty cool story so ill tell you anyway.
Having googled it, it seems that my story isnt even mentioned in what was supposedly the founding story of this one.  However nobody can decide on what the real meaning was.  So as this is my story,  ill tell it my way.  On the cruise ships we have a number of different uniforms, from boilersuits, to khakis, to red sea rig, to whites, all the way up to the Nines.  Which were basically a formal tux kind of thing.  So for us Dressed to the nines was the whole shebang.  Black shoes, black trousers, black cummerbund, black belt, ruffeled white shirt with gold buttons, white dinner jacket with gold buttons and a black bowtie with a white hat to top it off.... Dressed to the Nines we were! Not saying it came from cruise ships but certainly plausable that it may have come from a marine background.


Shit im starting to sound like a grumpy old sailor whining about the days of old.  GAH
Till Next time.. 

Garden Grove

Recently I was lucky enough to spend a few months in the states.  Whilst there I had the opportunity to look around LA for a few days.  Whilst I found most of the city busy, dirty and a good portion of it not what I had imagined.  I did find a few rather nice places and noteworthy sights.

Disneyland – noteworthy because of its shitness.  If it wasn’t screaming babies or mothers pushing kids around stacked 8 prams wide making it damn near impossible to get around them, it was the 45 minute waits to get into one of the rides.  Or the rides themselves that whilst they were actually pretty damn cool were clearly aimed at kids.  We paid $90US a pop for our tickets each and were out of there in under 3 hours.  I mean yeah some part of my inner child smiled and ticked another thing off the list.  But I genuinely wish I had gone to somewhere far more adult like Magic mountain where I could have scared the shit out of myself.  Hell, even a bar would have come up par on that particular day.  Special thanks to Heidi Klum and Seal (the dude doesn’t even have a last name) for getting them to close rides to the public so they could ride uninterrupted by the pesants.  Me wants me money back!

Venice beach -  Noteworthy due to its Sheer Awesome scummy AWESOMENESS.  For the Discerning traveller on a budget Venice beach really has it all.  Hillbilliy and Asian bums (both Americans) screaming at each other for taking the other ones rubbish pile.  White Sandy beaches with rolling surf.  Bums busking on the boulevard.  Hank Moodys apartment.  Shitty hotel rooms that seemed waaay nicer in the photos.  Scummy looking Tattoo parlours everywhere, I think I counted 6 on the boulevard in about a 300m area.  

 The Venice beach sign! Is actually EVERY bit as cool as you think its going to be. Its just a shame the area is a bit dodgy and you genuinely feel like you are going to get mugged being out there! Fantastic Mexican restaurants, fantastic seafood restaurants like Killer Shrimp where waitresses give you free wine if you tip well!  This is also the place that I had Sublime on repeat in my head, riding bikes down the boardwalk to muscle beach and back just seemed to be the place where the entire album fitted in like a nice comfortable pair of jeans.  I could imagine the band playing at one of the local bars in the early days.  Magic.  Summer time, when the livin’s easy.

Hollywood sign – The photo doesn’t do it justice.  It makes it look fantastic but in reality its a sign.  Just like the one we were going to get in wellington. Just a sign.  Whats more, its damn near impossible to get to, we drove, and we drove and we drove, went up hills, down hills, round hills, over hills.  Turned around and went back the way we came many times only to find that we had a better view where we started... and the star tour busses ?? fuck me. There are about 25thousand of the damn things on the road at any time of the day just waiting to hit the picks infront of you at any given moment...

Queen Mary -  The ship is moored as a floating hotel in long beach, we stayed onboard for a the first night we were in the states, was absolutely fantastic. Mainly for me being of the sailory inclinations, however even Christie thought it was pretty damn cool.  You get to sleep in one of the upper level cabins that are just how you would imagine something like the titanic to be.  Everything is highly polished and shiny and brassy and just fantasticly old school where ships were made properly.

Driving down the 405 freeway seemed to awaken something written lyrically in the back of my mind from my high school days.   Sublime ringing in my ears as we drove past Garden grove on the way to Disney land, poor Christie could hardly understand my excitement.  Garden Grove!! GARDEN GROVE.  This is the point where you realise that you are somewhere very cool.   There is me driving down a random highway through LA shouting out lyrics in near hysterics.  Every time I listen to the albums of my youth like sublime and Dr Dre which are both primarily California West coast artists, Im reminded of things that were happening to me whilst listening to music.  This was ofcourse at a fundamental development stage of my life so driving down the East Anehiem freeway sign took me right back to that special place of good times and good tunes.  Sunny blue skies and sand and riots with that particular song.  Oh and DR DRE? Jeez, from long beach to South Central?  ? Every single time long beach came up... “WO NOT THESE NIGGAS AGAIN” stuck in my head for days.  Crenshaw Blvd “PACKED AND FULL OF CARS”.  Christie just stares at me.  Nothing to say, she is sitting in a tiny Japanese car in a predominantly Black area with me shouting Dr Dre lyrics out the window every time I see a street sign.  I guess the thing that made it so cool is that now along with my memories of these classic songs of my teenage years now I have the memory of the actual place to go alongside it.  A far more satisfying moment than waiting in line at Disneyland.

LA, it was fun, you pissed me off with your commercial bullshit and insane highways, but you also had some nice unexpected surprises