The Rainbow Warrior left India last night after being refused entry into the port of Chennai. While we were waiting for word on the ship, Nimi from the land team was working hard to get the ship into the harbour for a press conference, to get supplies and disembark the Indian crew.

But it seems we ruffled a few feathers with our “CUT COAL” painting action Monday at the port entrance to Ennore.

On board the port authority was telling us that the port was congested and there was no room, but in the port the owners of the shipping companies were meeting with the port chairman pressuring him to refuse entry to the Rainbow Warrior.

Continue reading "Rainbow Warrior refused entry to Chennai" »

"RainbowWarrior this is Port Control. What are your intentions?”

“Port Control this is Rainbow Warrior. My intention is to keep north of the Fairway, clear of the Shridevi. I will not impede her safe navigation.”

We were so close to the breakwater (just a mile off). The Shridevi’s attention was on us - the tall ship waiting at the breakwater. The four teeny-weeny little zodiacs that came up on her other side, her lee-side, went by unnoticed… until they started painting.

Continue reading "Radio traffic during the painting" »

Rainbow Warrior stopped on her own accord - a black out. “Don’t bother starting the other engine” I informed the Chief engineer. We were in a good position 10 miles off the power station with five radios tuned to differing frequencies - monitoring Chennai and in particular Ennore Port, on the East coast of India. Hans the radio operator intercepted transmission between the bulk carrier Sridevi and the harbour pilot - her cargo operation complete (another 77 000 tonnes of thermal coal on the conveyor to become electricity).

Continue reading "Approaching the coal shipment" »

We arrived in Chennai today and made our mark: a big sign down the side of ship – CUT COAL – SAVE CLIMATE. The ship, like so many other cargo ships along this coast, is a coal carrier that ferries thermal coal from Paradip in the north to coal fired power stations in Chennai.

We sat just off shore with the harbour in sight of the Rainbow Warrior and we could see the ship under the larger cranes that unload the coal here. As the APJ Sridevi started to move out of the harbour, we got our four inflatable boats in the water. Two carrying teams to paint the 8 ft letters on the side of the ship, one safety boat and another boat carrying our campaigner Vinuta, the photographer, boat driver, crew and myself. We didn’t have time to get the local video crew on board so I doubled up as blogger and videographer – my first time shooting a Greenpeace action.

Continue reading "Sending a message to cut out the coal" »

I’ve just come off my first sea watch, we’re about 50 nautical miles off the coast from Gopalpur travelling at almost 10 knots.

The autopilot is temporarily disabled, I think the story is that Hans touched it and everything he touches these days ends up broken, but I can’t be sure. So we are doubling up on sea watches because we have to steer manually.

I got the sunrise shift - four to eight in the morning, and while I’m normally not one to jump out of the bed in the morning, especially at 4am, it was a bit easier knowing I was going to get to steer The Rainbow Warrior.

Continue reading "At the helm for the sunrise shift" »

Of course, not every one of us could sail on the Rainbow Warrior to Sundarbans and I was one of those left out.

So I did the next best thing to being there and discovering it first hand.

I bought a copy of The Hungry Tide a beautiful work of fiction set in the Sundarbans by Amitav Ghosh and settled down to read it on my way back to Bangalore and with every turn of the page I was drawn deeper into its fascinating world.

Continue reading "Hungry for more?" »

Getting profiles from the crew is always like pulling teeth, this trip is no exception. Most people ask what should I write? But oh the excuses – I have no brain, there were no chairs in the office, I don’t believe in this hero worship stuff it should be about the environment, I didn’t feel like writing last night…

But I consider this a personal victory, everyone on board has now written a profile, which is a first for me. Thank you fabulous crew for all pitching in.

Continue reading "Who are we?" »

We set off early for the southeast corner of Sagar Island, the task today – plant 8000 mangrove seedlings along the shore to help hold back the advancing seas.

This is an experimental plantation project started by Professor Sugata Hazra, the Head of Oceanography at Jadhaupur University.

He says that the Sundarbans is already experiencing the worst of climate change. Sea levels are rising faster here than the global average and the intensity of cyclonic storms and monsoon rainfall has increased.

The shift in rain patterns is having an impact on local crops and will affect the local communities’ food security while the change in salinity of the estuary also means fewer fish for them. Already two islands have disappeared underwater and many more are under threat.

Continue reading "Mangrove planting on Sagar Island" »

[Sent in by Tracy by email.]

I’ve never wanted to be a celebrity, always loved my anonymity, so being welcomed to Sagar Island by 12,000 people was a bit overwhelming.

We sailed from Kolkata at three in the morning so by noon we were well down the Hugli and approaching the Bay of Bengal. The "meeting", as it was described to us, to welcome the Rainbow Warrior to Sagar Island was due to start in the early afternoon and the Warrior was still a few hours away so we launched two inflatable boats to take us to the northern tip of the island and we would go the rest of the way by jeep to beat the ship to the Sagar Ganges beach.

Driving to the meeting point we got a good look at the interior of the island. It was so green – rice paddy fields and trees all along the road with mud and thatch houses blending into the environment. There are also clusters of houses occasionally punctuated by shops and markets making up the villages of the island.

In all there are about 200,000 people living on this small island, and more people coming as they are forced off other nearby islands that are being engulfed by the sea.

When we arrived our jeep drove right up to the stage which I immediately thought was a bit odd, but then I saw some familiar faces and Shomo one of our climate campaigners said we had to go to the stage right away. He said quickly, or there will be a riot.

Continue reading "I’m a climate celebrity – get me out of here" »

[Sent in by the captain via email.]

Pilot boarded at three, we cast off, turned with the tug and left the berth to coincide with high water in the lock and hence the ebb side of high tide on the Hugli. At Fisherman’s Reach we dropped the anchor and snapped around it to face the down streaming river - there was a shallow patch ahead and we had to wait for a rising tide. The low water passed, anchor up on the rising tide, but now are push against the flooding stream.

The flood tides are short lived the further up the river one travels until eventually they disappear altogether and there is just a river coming down. We had the flood against us for three hours before we raced ahead once again on the ebb, reached the north of Sagar Island and sent two zodiacs with a shore excursion of six to attend a meeting on the southern tip of the island. Lesley was amongst them and when the small Greenpeace boats pulled up to the island there was a cheer from thousands - they thought that Lesley was the captain.

Rainbow was screaming ahead at this stage, doing twelve knots, racing against daylight to reach the southern tip of the island. Zodiacs returned to the ship, having disembarked their cargoes, we picked them up at full speed - we could not miss the sunset (and we didn’t).

Continue reading "Captain's update" »