Another low (Weather that is)

Another tropical low is forming, ready to hit the West Australian coast. As such, the weather has been a bit wild, check out the photo of the pier from Tuesday. Waves where breaking over the pier.

A delivery ship is due in a few days, but as the tugs have to be launched off the piers crane, in order to tie the delivery ship up, I can't see any unloading occurring in the next week or so. The ship last called before Christmas, but again due to bad weather, only unloaded 1/3 of its containers.

The island has a crane on the other side of the island, but it has no deep water mooring buoys. So to unload there, the ship needs to bring a lighter with it (small barge), each container, is loaded off the ship on to the lighter, the lighter comes in near the cliff with the container, and then the crane lifts it to shore. Not something that they do unless they are desperate.

This is a bit of a problem as the supermarkets now have a large number of shelves which are empty. Still seems to be plenty of spirits and cigarettes for sale, beer stocks are looking decidedly low.

As well all the Jet fuel comes in on containers as well, and the last time the ship called, they forgot to put the jet fuel containers on last, so they could be off loaded first. Hence, with all the flights in and out out after the sinking incident last year, the island has run out of jet fuel.

This means all jets need to carry enough fuel to get to and from Christmas Island with out refueling on the island, so the Perth flight is now via Karnavin, where a refuel occurs in both directions, only adds a couple of hours to the 4 hour flight :-(.

(looks like we have some internet back, but its still got problems)