A s the dawn broke over the Pacific Ocean, Captain Arne Svenson, the Swedish captain of the Ocean Venturer, stepped quietly onto the bridge of the massive tanker. Svenson was a tough professional who had dedicated his life to the sea; no matter what time of the day or night he was always on the bridge hours before any ship under his command entered a port. He glanced in the direction of the helmsman and was mildly irritated to find that Mussaid ibn Khashoggi was on duty. Not that the swarthy Saudi Arabian wasn’t competent, quite the reverse. He was arguably one of the most professional and reliable men in the tanker’s entire crew, but Arne had been around seamen and the sea for nearly forty years and there was something about Khashoggi that made him uncomfortable. The Saudi never relaxed and Captain Svenson was convinced he had some sort of chip on his shoulder, but his early attempts to find out what that might be had been met with surly denial.
Acknowledging the greeting of his first officer, the Captain checked the tanker’s position on the GPS and then checked the chart. They were abeam of Point Perpendicular, less than 100 nautical miles from Port Jackson and the entrance to one of Captain Svenson’s favourite harbours. More importantly, the tanker’s arrival in the port would coincide with the high tide. The Ocean Venturer had a draft of 14.2 metres and the UKC, the under keel clearance, was critical. He knew that Port Jackson’s next high tide was 1.7 metres and that it would occur at 10.05 a.m. He also knew that the Western Channel of the harbour was dredged to a minimum of 13.7 metres at mean low tide. The critical points were the tops of the two tunnels the authorities had built on the harbour floor; even at high tide the massive tanker would clear them by barely a metre.
Captain Svenson thanked the duty steward for the mug of hot coffee and sank into the big leather chair that he’d worked a lifetime to win. Driving rain was lashing the reinforced glass on the bridge that towered over the Ocean Venturer’s wide deck, with its jigsaw puzzle of interconnecting pipes and winches. A great mass of foaming water exploded over the tanker’s huge bow but the Ocean Venturer barely registered the vibration. Svenson had a deep respect for the awesome power of the sea but the waves would not trouble him or his ship today. As if to underline his judgement the Ocean Venturer smashed through another wave, causing dark, foaming water to cascade over the decks only to disappear into the scuppers, spent and defeated. He glanced at the radar screen. There was a small blip on the screen, about 10 nautical miles further inshore.
‘She’s a bit bloody close in this weather,’ Svenson observed.
The First Mate nodded. ‘Small cargo vessel. The Jerusalem Bay. She’s due to dock just after us. My guess is that she’s making heavier going than we are and probably doesn’t want to be out in this weather longer than necessary. I’ve been keeping an eye on her.’
Svenson grinned. A 3-metre swell could make life very uncomfortable aboard a small container vessel. He glanced at the radar again. Well to the north, off the tanker’s starboard quarter, one and occasionally two fainter blips were showing on the screen.
‘And those?’ the Captain asked.
‘A couple of ocean-going tugs, the Montgomery and the Wavell, also due in Sydney at the same time as us.’
‘Who’d be a tug driver,’ Svenson observed sympathetically. He’d started out in tugs and he knew the sheer hell of a watch spent strapped in and hanging on through a long night, the deck pitching and rolling relentlessly beneath you.
‘A warship, the HMAS Melbourne, is due out of the harbour this morning as well and she’ll be followed by a car ship, the Shanghai, but otherwise, there’s nothing else to bother us,’ the First Mate said.