MV Greenpeace / PC 8023
Position: Noon Pos: Mooring Bouy, Hong Kong Harbour
June 16th, 1996
Day 31

I think for the majority of crew that joined the ship in Manila, the prospect of arriving in Hong Kong is very appealing.

Greg, the Reuters' journalist has been heard around the ship singing songs like, `I want to be free....'

Gis, our Russian deckhand/campaigner has been withdrawn these last couple of days, mourning the disappearance of his toothbrush and accusing innocent people of bizarre crimes.

There is a small group of people who like to congregate on the Monkey Island (the deck above the bridge) in the evening and talk about the birds and the bees. There is another small group that seem to be doing a lot of buzzing and chirping!

Dima, another of our campaigners who was born in Russia, moved to America when a teenager and now lives in Sweden with his Finnish wife who he met in Equador (and lovely children) has taken it upon himself to keep Jeannette and I company on the midnight - four watch.Making the hours fly by as he insists on singing us Russian songs and telling rather exaggerated stories on any subject you could imagine. He claims to be a insomniac, but I think really, the rest of his cabin mates have locked him out of the cabin!

Sunday morning, 0600 hrs we will be dropping anchor to clear immigration and then go on to a mooring buoy. This involves taking the anchor off the cable and chaining the ship to the buoy, the anchor weighs a few ton.

Then it will be people ashore to attend a press conference and others coming out to the ship. Over the next few days many crew will be leaving, and they have been a good bunch to sail with. We will hold a couple of open days to the public and have some small functions on board. In between trying to get general ship work done and preparing for the next leg of the voyage. On the 20th of June we leave for Nagasaki, Japan - one of the two cities devastated by nuclear bombs in 1945.

Tanya Popp.