In the drink

Hands up who remembers this joker



Yup, it's James Bolam who I first remember from a series on TV called "When the boat comes in".

I didn't like it very much and I liked the theme song even less, a traditional Northumbrian fav called (funnily enough) When the Boat Comes In. You remember, it went "Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy, Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing; Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy, Thou shall hev a fishy when the boat comes in".

Geez I hated hearing that every bloody week.

Today we watched a boat come in and its a biggie





She's a condo ship called "The World" and is the first ship of the summer cruise season to arrive, I think, gliding through the harbour entrance early this evening amid very un-summer like wind and pelting rain. Even most of the seagulls had somewhere else to be. We should have done the same as it was very cold, but it's always neat to watch these monsters dwarfing the Mount as they round it once through the entrance, with a little tug lurking somewhere not too far away. Sometimes, way back in the dimdarks, we'd walked around the Mount to the harbour entrance and watched them sail past at what seemed only an arm's length away, but these days I have to be satisfied with sitting at Pilot Bay which isn't half as impressive.

The World heads out tomorrow night, but her place is guaranteed to be taken by many more over the next 5 months. We'll probably go and watch them, too, cos we are boring like that :0)

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The World - numbers:
196 metres long
30 metres wide
200 passengers
250 staff
$1.9m - $5.4m price or
$1800 a night rent

Note the first pic shows something absolutely peculiar to Pilot Bay - because the Mount is lower than Tauranga, the harbour and beach are on a tilt. It's not my abysmal photography skills or leaning into the wind and stuff...

Would I shit you?