Ahmet,
I am familiar with the cigarette "gratuities" handed out to port officials as I
did the handing out in Siri Lanka and Taiwan when I was working in that area.
The Egyptians seemed to be the worst, like rats swarming all over the ship but
I was not directly involved there. I kept my door locked and only reasoned to
my name or a prior phone call while we were there.
There was a funny incident in Egypt. I was sitting in the Chief Mate's room
watching the parade of "officials" to the Captains office. The one in the
fanciest outfit with shiny braid and epaulets was the rat inspector, and the
one in the slacks and golf shirt was the Captain of the Port.
The most unusual was the Bangladeshi official (we called him the White Rat as
he had an all-white uniform) who wanted me to type up an import tax bill to
present to the Captain for the diesel fuel we carried with us to run the
evacuators (large vacuum cleaners) that sucked out our "Care Package" of
donated wheat from our tanker into barges alongside. I just could not do it.
I took him to the radio room typewriter and explained I would have to be paid
overtime if I typed the bill and the Captain refused to authorized that. It
took him a while to absorb the fact the my typewriter only made upper case
letters. I never found out how much the tax bill was or if it was paid.
The next morning it was a shock seeing cooking fires all over the deck of our
tanker where the longshoremen were boiling wheat for breakfast. About like the
shock of seeing (on film) a safety expert open the inspection hatch on a tank
top aboard the Manhattan (America's largest tanker) and light off the gasoline
fumes gushing out of the port with a Zippo. The camera got a good shot of the
flames, then he casually flipped the lid shut.
Norm
S/V Bandersnatch
----- Original Message -----
From: ahmet erkan
To: liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com
Cc: nadirgo...@yahoo.com
Sent: 4/11/2011 11:32:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] Baltimore to New Orleans
Thanks for the reply Norm,
Captain Nadir heard a story about a US agricultural inspector who found an
apple seed on deck and because it was discovered outside a living space, the
ship was fined $5000. On Turkish ships just before fruit begins to get over
ripe it is boiled in light syrup and served as desert, except prior to US
agricultural inspectors are to board they boil all the fruit whether ripe or
green. The agency could not believe that Nadir didn't have to pay any fines in
Baltimore because every ship they docked earlier paid at least $1000. Nadir
must have learned how to kiss up to the agricultural inspectors real well :-)
Also, did you know that Suez canal is known as the Marlborough canal among
merchantmen, because of the cartons of cigarettes that have to be given out to
the officials as well as the bribes. Evidently things deteriorated in Panama as
well as the control is transferred from US to the Panamenians.
Fair winds
Ahmet
S/V 8827
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