Greenpeace ship moves in to block more palm oil tankers
Apologies for not posting an update yesterday. The anchor chain of the Isola Corallo has been occupied ever since Wednesday night, and still is, but we've been waiting for another opportunity to present itself. Finally, after long hours of observing the traffic in Dumai port and several false hopes, about an hour before dawn our chance came. Now the Esperanza itself has moved in to block the Corallo from taking on its cargo of palm oil.
There's one part of the quayside here dedicated to piping palm oil into the bellies of the tankers. Up until a couple of hours ago it was occupied by two other ships; then one of them moved out and the Esperanza was able to take its place.
We're now preventing the Corallo from coming alongside - it's a much larger ship, just a bit bigger than the Gran Couva we saw earlier in the week, and so both us and the other ship already here will need to move before the Corallo can come in.
Despite the early hour, all hands were on deck. It was my job to help fix the mooring lines once the Esperanza had reached the quay, which involved jumping down from the poop deck. Pipes and thick mud lay directly beneath, but I managed to get down without breaking my ankle.
Dragging the heavy lines around, it wasn't long before I was covered in mud and it stinks. The pipes lying around are the ones which carry the crude palm oil, which is the brightest yellow-orange I've seen this side of a bottle of Sunkist. Even when not being used, oil oozes from the pipes, creating the fatty, rancid mud I'm still caked in.
I had expected at least a security guard or a group of police waiting to greet us, but apart from a couple of men with bicycles, there was no one around. So for the time being, we're preventing 29,000 tonnes of Sinar Mas' palm oil being exported to Rotterdam, the Corallo's destination.
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