A Slow Boat From China - Load of Junk

Whilst I was in Singapore I had a text message from a former colleague who lives in Subic.  Some time ago he'd mentioned that between him and a friend they were planning to buy a boat in Hong Kong and to bring it to Subic Bay to keep and use. At the time I'd expressed an interest in joining the boat for the journey from HK to Subic

At very short notice via text message I was told the boat was ready to leave on the Wednesday but I wasn't leaving Singapore until the Tuesday.  I still wanted to join but I had to refuse as it would have meant me flying  direct from Singapore direct to HK to rendezvous with the boat, and I needed to be back in the Philippines, albeit briefly, for work reasons and to grab some clothes for the boat trip.

Having also received an e-mail on the same subject and read the thread included it was apparent hat the reason for the short notice was that someone had dropped out at the 12th hour and so I was second choice.  Nice.

Regardless of this I was prepared to swallow my pride and was still keen to go, just for the adventure but told them that unless the departure date could be postponed I wouldn't be able to make it but I was told the dates were cast in stone.

But apparently the stone was made out of something not so solid as I was subsequently told the boat would be leaving on Wednesday lunchtime so there was a window of opportunity, even if it was a very small window.  It would mean flying back to Subic on the Tuesday and arriving late afternoon, getting stuck into the paperwork I needed to do, book a flight at short notice (assuming there was a flight available) and up at 3am to catch the early flight to Hong Kong.

Booking a flight at short notice hurts as you're stung by being charged an outrageous amount for the flight.  I ended up paying far more for a one-way, 1 hour flight than I paid for a 3½ hour return flight to Singapore.

I caught the early flight from Clark to HK on Wednesday the 4th April. On arrival at the airport in HK I had only sketchy information on the exact plan (it didn't seem to be running well) and where to go.  I had a text message from one of the boat's co-owners who told me that a guy called Dirk, also travelling from Subic, had left his passport in the departure lounge (lets call him Berk) and had had to stay overnight in transit until his passport arrived with the next flight, and I was to meet him in the airport arrivals hall.  Despite giving him two phone numbers this seemed to be doomed to failure and after waiting for longer than necessary at the agreed rendezvous I received another message saying Berk was on the train to HK Central without me (it was going from bad to worse), so I followed suit and was told to head to the ABC.  Now using acronyms is fine so long as everyone else around you knows what they mean and trying to use them to appear to be clever, is just not clever.  To me, the ABC was a cinema on King's Street in Maidstone that was the venue for the chaotic and riotous Saturday morning cinema and which was demolished in the 70s (I guess) to make way for a new shopping centre, so it clearly wasn't there.  As it turned out the ABC was Aberdeen Boat Club - that's Aberdeen HK, not Scotland . . . .

Once off the train I went looking for the bus to Aberdeen and spotted a familiar looking guy that I'd seen in  Subic so walked over and asked him if he was Berk, and it was.  Berk told me he was heading off to the harbour control immigration office to arrange our exit later that day and so I went with him.  When we got there, which wasn't too far from the station and we went by taxi but it would have been quicker to walk, it was closed due to it being a public holiday, which made me begin to wonder about the efficiency of the planning that had gone into this trip.

From the harbour immigration office we headed to the HKYC (that's Hong Kong Yacht Club, see how clever I am?!) where we were to meet the other members of the crew.  It was here that I found out that our departure was meant to coincide with the Rolex China Sea Race from Hong Kong to Subic so that there would be other boats in the vicinity should we encounter difficulties, which did little to improve my confidence, especially as we were going to be leaving a day later than all those super-sleek racing yachts speeding towards Subic Bay without us.

The time spent waiting for the others to appear was spent with a beer in my hand watching the start of the yacht race.  It's not exactly like Formula 1, is it?  All the yacht seemed to mingle around the harbour and then once a klaxon was sounded they then pointed in the same general direction and off they (slowly) went.  The yacht club terrace consisted mostly of the posh, nouveau riche and bankers all in a sea of blazers, boat shoes, pressed chinos, G&Ts and bubbly which was far from my liking.  All Ruperts, Sebastians, Felicities and Henriettas.  About as nice as a golf club.

The other crew members turned up and after the dull start to the race we introduced ourselves and made a plan.  There were to six of us in total: from Subic there was me, Berk (Dutch), Jim (ex British Army and part owner of the boat) and from Macau/HK there was Aussie Adam (security systems) and two more Brits, Brian (façade engineering) and  John (mechanical engineer).

The plan was this: after lunch head over to Aberdeen to check the boat then back spend the night in in Central.  The next day travel to Aberdeen first thing in the morning.  Pick up a few supplies and then head off promptly at midday, with the trip to Subic taking no more than 3 days to complete.

At Aberdeen we boarded a harbour taxi, which are sampans deftly piloted by leathery faced old Chinese ladies, and headed to the boat.  

Sampan in the rain

I was told the boat we would be taking to Subic was a Chinese Junk. Now, I don't know about you but to my mind's eye a Chinese Junk looks like this:

Which I believed to be relatively sea worthy ocean going sailing vessel that was the ship of choice of Chinese traders/mariners. Although I did think for a minute that perhaps if the Chinese had chosen something else there wouldn't be quite so many programmes on the Discovery Channel about salvaging willow pattern pottery from the sea bed.

However, what it was in fact was this:

Now, whilst it is undoubtedly a nice boat I don't know about you, and I'm no expert, but to me this didn't appear to me to be a ocean going vessel capable of crossing the South China Sea. Well perhaps on a flat calm but not on even remotely choppy seas, never mind a storm. Perfect perhaps for cruising the coastline or Hong Kong island hopping but nothing too adventurous.  

I was having serious doubts about this trip and considered using the excuse that as there had been a delay I needed to be back in Subic and so would have to bail out.  But you know what, I didn't want to be the guy who scuppered the whole trip.  Six people were needed (so I was told) and I looked around at the others and they didn't outwardly show any sign of concern, especially Berk who was apparently a sailor extraordinaire (but who couldn't look after his passport) and was to be our pilot and captain for the trip.  So I continued to go along with it albeit with some serious reservations.

There was no life raft on the boat. One would have to be acquired. There was no EPIRB (Emergency Positioning Indicating Radio Beacon) so in the event of an emergency we could be found in the lift raft instead of bobbing around in the South China Sea for days, weeks or months on end.  I'm not even sure there were any distress flares. Berk had a hand held VHF radio, which if dunked in the sea would have been useless and even if it wasn't, was only good for line of sight distance so unless there were loads of ships passing we wouldn't be able to contact them.  There was no power outlet so one would have to be rigged up.  There was no refrigeration to keep food fresh (why would there be?  It's not like it was the sort of boat built to spend days at sea in).  The navigation lights needed new bulbs.  And there was me thinking it was all set up ready to go.

Really it was going from bad to worse.  There seemed to have hardly been any real or proper preparation and I could see with the amount of preparation involved it was going to be difficult to leave the following day, never mind leaving at midday.

After making a list of items needed we headed back to Central.  I went to bed early whilst the others went out on the lash - perfect preparation for a busy day ahead.