A two day posting ...
Past early morning tankers, motorized dhows and a Yang Ming Line container ship, we enter Jebel Ali, Dubai's container terminal.
You may remember that, two years ago, I was not allowed in Libya. If you don't, see October, 2009, posting:
trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.com/2009/10/libya-trip-that-wasnt.html
This morning, I am barred from Dubai.
Here's about all I'll see of the place (where property prices plummeted and which nearly went bankrupt in 2009), whose hospitality ranks with that of Colonel Gaddafi.
Canada's in a dispute with the United Arab Emirates over aircraft landing rights. Although, before leaving, I was assured of being able to disembark in Dubai, it turns out I am the victim of incompetent or just bloody-minded officials. Australians, however, are welcome, but Denis has refused to pay $70 USD for the privilege of a couple of hours ashore.
The terminal's far from the city and I'd only hoped to buy a newspaper. So, not hugely disappointed to have avoided the muggy heat and taxi drivers who, like taxi drivers everywhere (except London), expect the passenger to tell them how to find the destination.
Enough of irritating statelets ... on the nicely air conditioned bridge, I have a front row view of a container terminal's extraordinary choreography. Tons of steel whisk by just feet away. An experienced crane operator can move more than forty boxes an hour.
Amber is thirteen containers across. But look at the future. Cranes in Dubai extend far beyond Amber's width.
Astern, the COSCO (China Overseas Shipping Company) Thailand departs. She's seventeen rows wide.
There are now ships on which containers are stacked twenty-two rows across. These hold as much as 15,500 TEU. Remember, Amber can hold just 4,400 TEU.
And consider this: Maersk has ordered twenty new ships, capable of carrying 18,000 TEU. These will only be used between Asia and Europe via Suez as they'll be too big for the new Panama Canal locks.
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Twenty-one hours in Dubai and Amber’s gangway has been raised. Below - far below - you can just see some of the dockers.
The deck trembles, smoke pours from the funnel and mooring lines are loosened. Captain and pilot peer from the starboard bridge wing and dockers heave lines – fore and aft – into the harbour water. We're - almost imperceptibly, at first - easing away.
Past a row of vessels and out into the Persian Gulf.
The Kuala Lumpur Express heads in to occupy our vacated terminal space.
Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living things too many to number: creatures both small and great. There move the ships and there is that Leviathan …
Psalm 104.25-26
The writer of Psalm 104 can never have imagined such fleets and such leviathans.
