I thought I would share my unfortunate tale of signing onto Richard Maersk.
Lots of events transpired that day which led from one setback(for me ofcourse) to another.
Richard Maersk was reaching Gibraltar on 16 April 2010. So i was set upon my journey from Mumbai via London. I got a nice Air India flight(not sarcastic) from Mumbai to London and a day's stay there. Things were going smoothly with me enjoying the cold, gray, cloudy weather in London that day walking around Wesminister Abbey(Pics on my website http://www.basujit.in).
Come the morning of 15 April 2010, I was supposed to get onto a morning 3 hour flight to Gibraltar. Me being the really punctual type, I reached the airport well in time and made my way to the boarding gates. Sitting in the waiting area and using the Heathrow wifi on my iphone I was just going through the latest news flashes. As I read about the volcanic explosion in Iceland, i suddenly knew what all the delays were about. The airport information boards started showing the dreadful CANCELLED sign in front of flights. Well, we did take off after a certain delay but I did find out that mine was the last flight out of London that day.
The flight itself was a pretty normal BA flight. With music in my ears and terrified brits around me (ya guys, its true what they show in the movies), it seemed like the day would finally go well.
After not quite a routine pilot cabin announcement, I came to know that the captain on this flight was a last minute change coz the original guy was a very senior captain and BA needed him elsewhere. Approaching Gibraltar, he said that there was quite a lot of tailwind and that it could be possible that they wouldnt be able to land. You see the Gibraltar airstrip isn't that long. Well as things were going that day ofcourse he couldnt land the plane there and we diverted to Malaga. Well, Malaga might be a 3 hour drive for Europeans, for people like me landing in Spain without a visa literally means a one way ticket home.
Ofcourse i presented my case to immigration with all my sincerity. It did help that I had a dozen other sailors stuck with me from Turkey and Philippines also joining ships in Gibraltar. After a lot of talking and my extremely amazing Spanish to English translation skills, they did issue me a temporary visa but ofcourse after making me wait at Policia for about 7 to 8 hours.
Sitting in the bus, dozing off on the way(duh), reaching Gibraltar, seeing the red telephone booth on entry(finally out of spain), and reaching the hotel is nothing much of a story. Well I slept well that night and joined the next day.
Coming back to the Gibraltar airstrip. Its actually really small. Heres a pic I took from our electronic chart. Its 1 nm across, the whole width of the country.
A fun day..:)
Cheers,
Basujit
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:De Poel,Westland,The Netherlands
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