Sea life: cruising after COVID

Immediately the long biosecurity announcements including all screens on board, started warning of taking food off the ship or wearing muddy shoes from farms "as other countries have had foot and mouth". This long message was repeated every 30 minutes and after 2 hours I approached the reception pleading that was enough for reasonable coherent and educated people to bear. But that was the NZ government instruction and they had to follow rules. After several ports it was a scramble for passengers to get off or listen to the Groundhog day message and by now we had all been on a farm - New Zealand - for the last few days.

Clearly the army within biosecurity had to be kept busy. In the previous few weeks four cruise ships of impeccable credentials have been found in breach of biofoul standards, due to algae and barnacles on their hulls, and had to cancel schedules, upsetting some 15,000 tourists. Having owned boats and commercial vessels for the last 5 decades, I can assure readers that you can find algae and barnacles within 3 weeks of coming out of a drydock or slipping, given the right water conditions. Such growth starts immediately the vessel is immersed and if New Zealand bureaucrats are serious, they should check every ship or boat arrival or even their own domestic fleets, but there's no money there.

Keeping bureaucrats busy is one thing but picking on 5 star cruise ships and upsetting inbound tourists and national tourism operators is a new and dangerous game.

Not to be dissuaded from my voyage mission and armed with my land claim entitled "Gies it Back" I ventured ashore at Port Chalmers and caught the bus into Dunedin.

Ardern's Army also instructed all passengers to show not just their electronic cabin keys (which has an embedded foto for ships' scanners) but also to show a separate picture ID. This employed another army of checkers at all the dock gates and interestingly the NZ domestic airlines don't impose such a duplication when transitting flights.

"Put your seat belts on" instructed the bus driver in Wellington, "in case the police board, or it is a $50 fine each of you!"

The beggars in the six ports visited, unnoticed in my last visit before the Arden policies came into effect, were in every street. This, along with the burgeoning army of bureaucrats and new measures of total control even for tourists, is a great sign of socialism at work.

I also hadn't realized that all NZ bureaucracies do not attend their offices on a Monday or a Friday and now have embedded the 4 day weekends in their psyche to offset the recent pay rises that the poor souls had to grapple with. So my Dunedin and Auckland visits were disappointing as no-one was home to accept the land claim for Scotland.

We have agreed that our next cruise will be to the Pacific Islands where the locals actually do welcome visitors.