BRISBANE BLOG: The latest
Will it be the Ghost of Christmas past, or Christmas future for the dozen sailors intending competing in the 40th Contender Worlds? With the scheduled start of the regatta set for immediately after the festive season ends, doubts are growing stronger by the day that the boats will not reach the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, host for the event, in time for any form of practice or acclimatisation.
As was reported last week, the container holding all of the boats, masts, sails, and sailing gear is still some 3,000 miles short of its destination. Having been left on the quayside in Malaysia, the search has been on for alternate routes to get the container not only down into Australia, but through the complex process of Customs Entry – and all before the wind down starts for what could be an extended Christmas Break.
Shippers Peters and May look to have exhausted the search for options and are back to just waiting for the next boat, which in theory would see the container arrive in the docks on Christmas Day. The other alternative, which involved sending the container to Sydney or Perth, then transhipping across Australia by train, has been discounted on grounds of cost. With the Contender sailors already paying the shipping charges themselves, to be suddenly hit with a huge overhead payment just makes the plan a non-starter ( as neither the shippers or the freight company at present seem unwilling to pay the extra for this themselves).
However, the container arriving in Brisbane, just an hour away from its final destination could still see the final delivery delayed by as much as 4 or 5 days. Having failed to get the boats to the event on time, the focus is now on Peters and May and their Australian representatives to pull something special out, to actually get the sailors reunited with their boats as quickly as possible.
With events in exotic locations becoming an ever more popular part of the dinghy racing scene, sailors will start to look for added reassurances that when discussing transport, that a given date is something that can be relied upon. Having let this particular group of sailors down once already, when the container failed to show at the agreed time for packing, this particular problem is growing bigger by the day, as the failure to meet the delivery date grows ever nearer. One would hate to cast Peters and May as the Scrooges in this story, but the fact remains that unless some very real seasonal spirit is shown – and soon, it will be a bleak Christmas indeed for the Team GBR boats.
Across the far east, container terminals such as this one at Singapore are working close to capacity. It is no surprise then that mistake do occasionally occur. Somewhere down there, or at another similar terminal further up into Malaya, is the container with a dozen GBR contenders. Will this make Brisbane in time, not just for the Worlds, but for the sailors to get some time afloat in the challenging conditions at Brisbane? Only time will tell.
David Henshall
Bearfacemedia/Singapore