This shipping company's site is kind of hard to use. Click on the link below to bring up the
company's fleet list. Scroll down until you find the TASMAN CHALLENGER.
Click on that ships name to find out more about it.
Click on the satellite position link to see where the ship is.

Click here for the TASMAN CHALLENGER
(Alas, it seems you can no longer track the adventures of the Challenger, but this is still an interesting site.)

Notes from the Sea

7 July 2001 The adventure continues... After about 10 days of sailing we're only 2 and half or 3 days from Surabaya. Coming back into the reality of the world will be a bit like waking from a 2 week dream. It will take us a minute to wipe the crusty bits out of our eyes and join the pace of the life again. The dream started out a bit rocky. The first day at sea- about 4 hours outside of Tauranga, the engine stopped working- the captain joked that it was "tired." Jay didn't find this amusing. About 2 hours later they'd gotten it up and running again. We were off and reading. I had my nose buried in War and Peace and JJ was reading some Italo Calvino fairy tales. That evening the engine stopped again and we rocked back and forth on the ocean drinking wine making stranded jokes and reading until we were sick of that and went to bed early. The ship started moving again by 10 PM. The next day we started off smoothly and went up to the deck where the steward, Marcos, had put out some deck chairs for us and Dick- our fellow passenger. It was cold and soon it was very windy. I found it hard to read wearing gloves and eventually went back inside- where I found Jason puking.The seas got rougher and the next 40 hours or so was spent with Jason horizontal- with occasional vertical forays that ended in puking. He also spent alot of time muttering and cursing me from his sick bed. The seas were pretty rough and it did amuse him to watch me lose a few meals as well. The crew showed him great sympathy and told me all their old sailor war stories of "feeding the fishes" for their first 6 months aboard and tales of sailors who are hell bent on turning back after a week at sea- then by six months out they are saliors for life and that's that. Jason didn't get to hear any of these heartening stories because he refused to leave his bunk-due to excessive vomitting. The crew members and steward all insisted that he must eat something and kept bringing food and sea sickness medications to our door. Eventually Jason was able to take in a few slices of bread and keep down some mysterious sea sickness pills- given by the second mate from Burma which did the trick. After we emerged from the coccoon of our room, the weather had gotten warmer, the seas much calmer- except for the occasional "high waves" and we were initiated into the world of the sailor. Jason was met with many a wide grin when he ventured out onto the deck and came back to meals. Now those early days seem very distant- to me at least. I don't think Jason's forgotten so quickly. Our life on board is satisfyingly simple. We rise at 7:30-8:00 AM and go to breakfast. We both have a bowl of Rice Bubbles- better known as Rice Krispies, but I guess Kellog thought the Australians and NZnders wouldn't like a "krispie" cereal. Each morning we refuse the hot breakfast option- sometimes eggs and sardines, sometimes eggs and liver- even when its plain old eggs and bacon we refuse it and enjoy our cold cereal. No matter what time we wake up for breakfast we always seem to be last and eat it by ourselves. After breakfast we retire to "the beach"- an upper deck which has a few chairs on it and a lot of shade- where we commence to read for the morning. Maybe we take a brief stroll to the bridge or stand up and look out at the oceans spreading out on all sides of us. We stand at the rail, admire its majesty and inky depths and then return to our seats. Very soon this kind of idling is interrupted by the incongrous honk of the horn which signals lunch. Everyday even though I know it's just a signal I can't help thinking to myself, "what the hell are they honking at out here in the middle of nowhere?" We go in to lunch and take our assigned seats. The table is set as follows: Captain at the head, I am to his right, Jason is to my right and Dick is to Jason's right. Chief Engineer sits to Captain's left and Chief Mate, when he comes to meals, sits next to Chief Engineer. Nobody seems to call anybody else by name- its all "Chief" and "engineer." Of the total crew of 30- there are at least 15 different nationalities represented- probably more. The captain is Indian, Chief engineer is from Montenegro and Chief mate is Russian. The steward is Phillipino, the second mates and engineers are from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Burma- you get the idea. Everyone communicates in English and aside from Dick,who's Australian and ourselves, it's nobody's first language. Cook, who is German, provides us hearty succulent meals-according to company policy. Lunch every day starts with soup- usually some kind of meat broth and vegetabes. This is followed by a meat, a potato/rice option, some kind of buttered and salted canned vegetable and then fresh tomato and cucumber salad and breads with meat and cheeses and fruit or sometimes ice cream for dessert. Everything is very salty. The meals can be sort of surreal in their sameness. Chief Engineer- his name is Marko, a sweet good natured man always says the same jokes- like no more water -"Okay-is too strong for me, too strong haha haha. " (He starts most of his sentences with "okay") Captain sits quietly at the head of the table. He's a bit shy and sometimes tries to start a lively conversation, but often doesn't know how to get it going. He'll put out a sentance, a statement of fact like " The people that live on very small islands, I don't know what they do." He sort of hopes someone else will take up the slack and make this into a fruitful table conversation- sometimes it works. More often Dick leads the conversations. He's about 65. He was a commercial pilot in Hong Kong for many years. He's lived everywhere. he's done everything and knows about all things mechanical. He manages to be all this is a very unpretentious way. Maybe because he's Australian. So often Dick will take over with some question about how the ship works or some quirk of the motor he's noticed today and then Chief takes up the slack and tells funny stories. Chief mate, when he comes which isn't that often- I think he has to watch the bridge when the Captain is at meals- keeps his head down and generally doesn't say anything but a gruff excuse me as he pushes away his chair from the table. Lunch usually goes on for an hour and then its back to the beach or maybe for a stroll up through all the cargo to the bow- where we watch for flying fishes. Until yesterday this was a fruitless watch, but finally we've seen bunches and bunches of them. They skim the water, wings flapping, for about 10 seconds before diving back under. There were whole schools of tiny flying fishes out there yesterday. I tried in vain to capture one on film. Basically we while away the afternoon until dinner and then dinner proceeds along the same lines as lunch- except no soup. The supreme irony is with all Cook's German food, he's the only actual German on board and everyone else seems to spend a lot of energy pouring thai chili sauce on their saurkraut to make it a little less German. After dinner we retire to the lounge with a bottle of wine and either play backgammon or watch movies- they have a VCR. In fact in their odd little collection they even had Yup, Police Academy 7 Mission to Moscow- we just watched my part- even out at sea with nothing to do for 13 days we were not compelled to watch the rest of the film. Anyways, the days go on like that- fish on fridays, soup and sausage on saturday break up the days with routines inside routines. Last sunday they had a barbecue for everyone on board. The set up a big table down on deck and festooned the area with nautical flags. Everyone came. One of the sailors was already drunk before it began. He is from Bali- and so named "Bali-boy"- self-titled I believe. He went around telling us of the wonders of Bali in very broken English before putting on a Karaoke video of weird love songs and jumping up on the spare propellor to dance. Cook brought out piles and piles of every kind of meat imaginable- pork, lamb, octopus, beef, sausages etc. The men all lined up and grabbed what the wanted and threw it on the long wood and charcoal grill. Beer flowed freely and we discovered to our surprise that they throw all non-plastic waste straight overboard. So they evening was punctuated by beer bottles sailing through the air and into the sea. The men grouped by region and language and then regrouped again by work and mingled and generally everybody had a good time. Some guys spent the whole time recording the barbecue on video- I can only imagine how boring it must be to watch later- 30 drunken sailors 4 hours worth of video? Later in the evening the Eastern European coalition had taken over the table with a free flowing bottle of vodka and plenty of toasts were made. The evening degenerated further into joke telling and funny stories. On at least one occasion I was made to stop up my womanly ears. Chief Mate's Tale The Chief Mate, Ivan, told us a story about when he was in Moscow in the late 80's. There were a lot of African military officials studying at the military academy at that time. Ivan was in Moscow on some business at the naval academy and had gone to the cafeteria for dinner. The room was a vast hall with rows of columns and small tables. He set his stuff down and then got up from his table for some reason- maybe to go to the bathroom- when he returned an elaborately dressed gentleman- probablya high ranking official from Ghana, was seated at his table- eating his soup. Ivan didn't know what to do. He was very angry and sat across from the man and stared at him. Ivan then grabbed the plate of potatos,also at the table and pulling them towards himself- and said "MINE." The Ghanan's eyes widened but he ate the soup in silence. The Ghanan went to take a sip of his juice and Ivan reached out across the table and grabbed it shaking his head and sternly saying "NO". The Ghanan just stared at Ivan. Finally he finished the soup and scurried away still watching Ivan in shock. It was at this point that Ivan, our Chief, looked over and saw two rows over in the room, his own table- entirely undisturbed- soup potatos and juice all unmolested- right where he'd left them. Everyone responded with peals of laughter and this spurred other funny stories of mistaken possessions. Everyone laughed and joked until late in the evening... Also on board The stars at night. We 've had a few chances to come out and explore the Southern sky. One of the third mates eagerly points out the constellations when we come and visit him  on the bridge in the evening. The sky is full of shooting stars- which is neat- but also gives me pause because you always hear that most meteors that come down in the atmosphere - either burn up or just fall somewhere at sea... well ...so far there haven't been any big splashes near us. Other than meteor dangers we now have entered pirate territory.  All this really means, aside from increased usage of the words "Yar, matey," is that they've rigged a few extra lights to our cargo deck which shine on the water to discourage any local baddies from coming up to us and trying to board. Since we have barely seen another ship since the Torres strait this seems highly unlikely, but I guess about 10 years ago it used to happen with some frequency. The Torres strait is the only land we saw on this whole 13 day journey. we came quite close to the northen tip of Australia and New Guinnea on the other side.  Mostly we passed through little islands and lots of reefs.  It was quite beautiful.  The whole passage took about 10 hours.  We saw one shipwreck on a reef- it looked like an OLD wooden boat with two masts tipped up on its side on the sand.  At it's most narrow the strait is 1 mile wide and at that point we passed sveral other ships- 1 of which seemed to be our doppelganger-same coloring, same kind of cranes, same design- the only thing was we weren't standing on the opposite deck waving at ourselves as they passed back in time. Jason has taken the opportunity of being at sea to grow a mustauche.  He's quite pleased with himself and his now bushy upper lip.  Combined with his mutton choppy side burns and the fact that our imaginations' have been influenced by reading War and Peace- it makes him look very 19th centuryish.- picture a dashing young guard in the Polish calvary. Now dress him in a gaudy Hawaiin shirt and ray ban sun glasses- voila you have Jason's new look. That's all for now... Love, Carolyn and Jason