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FREIGHT BREAK Up Pohnpei!


Coyne Airways knows a lot about ‘difficult to reach’ places. Let’s hope that some of their expertise rubs off on the Pohnpei football team, which the all-cargo carrier is sponsoring. Yes, you read that correctly, by the way – it’s Pohnpei, not Pompey. Pohnpei is the


largest of a group of islands making up the state of Micronesia in the Pacific. In the atlas, it’s one of those squared off bits of the Pacific ocean with a few dots in it. But the difficult to reach place is not so much the islands themselves but the


FIFA world rankings. As the team of part-timers has never won a competitive match and recently went down 16-1 to the footballing powerhouse that is Guam, this could be a tall order. Pohnpei does though have a five-year plan to achieve FIFA recognition. The team call themselves ‘the biggest underdogs in world football’, the media preferring the less diplomatic tag, ‘the world’s worst team’. But it’s easy to mock. As the airline’s CEO Larry Coyne says: “These are inspiring


young men. We have been really motivated by the story of the Pohnpei national team and particularly by the enormous commitment of their players and coaches in achieving their aim.” To begin to be taken seriously by the football authorities, Pohnpei need to play


regular international matches against FIFA-registered countries; given that even Guam is a three-hour flight away, it puts British away supporters’ moans about Carlisle or Plymouth into context.


More travel troubles


Following on from his epic trip back from Malta in FBJ 1, here’s the latest installment in the travel woes of our publisher John Saunders. Fetching up in Dover for the evening Seafrance ferry to Calais in his campervan as a prelude to a couple of weeks in Italy he was told by the check-in staff: “Excuse me, do you realise you’re 24 hours late?” Apparently, it was only through the efforts of Stewart Pearce, James Hodges


and Hazel Polden and in squeezing his van - roughly the size of a double-decker bus – onto a very full ferry that he didn’t spend the first week of his hols in rainy Kent rather than sunny Italy. Perhaps John needs to limit his horizons a bit. I’m told New Brighton can be


very nice at this time of year. And if you do get bumped off the Mersey Ferry, it’s only half an hour to wait until the next one.


FBJ crossword No. 3


PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO INCLUDE YOUR NAME ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER.


£50! WIN


Winner drawn Monday 1st November 2010 Send entries to: FBJ CROSSWORD Freight Business Journal Saunders Associates Ltd Station House Mersey Road Liverpool UK L17 6AG


Employees of FBJ and their agents are not eligible to enter.


Last issue’s winner: Ken Gower


Storm Force


I must thank PD Ports for a grand day out in Hartlepool in August, taking part of the sail-past at the end of the Tall Ships race. We were on board the Wylde Swan, a sail training vessel and the world’s tallest two-masted ship of its kind. My other half enjoyed it too, despite the fact that at times the Wylde


Swan seemed to be floating along in its own personal rain-cloud. Meanwhile, Hartlepool was visible in the far distance bathed in sunlight, making it a rather unlikely Shangri-La, though that was of little comfort to any skimpily-clad females teetering about on deck. Back home, we’re now recounting the tale to the South London landlubbers as


if we’d rounded Cape Horn in a Force 9 gale rather than a gentle potter around Hartlepool Bay.


Hidden danger


Many of us find the pork scratching a rather daunting pub snack, but mostly the only damage it does is to teeth – until now that is. News reaches us from Washington State, where a Highway Patrol trooper reported that the driver of a FedEx tractor-trailer rig choked on spicy pork rinds (we presume this is an American cousin of the British pork scratching) lost control of his truck on an interstate and ended up in a ditch. It only goes to show – danger can lurk in the most unexpected places.


AcROSS


4 Davies_ , British Freight Forwarder (6) 5 Opposite number to 24 down (6) 8 Tiger or football team (6)


10 Scottish Port City (7) 15 Very buoyant Irish port (4) 17 Ferry Operator (9) 19 Cargo airline (Africa specialist) (6) 20 Port in Russian far east (11) 21 Inland Chinese city, northern Henan province (8)


23 Capital of Wales - definitely not English (8)


25 North Wales ferry port (8) 28 UK coastal and port region (10) 29 Island and port in Mediterranean (5) 30 ‘Science’ of freight movement (9)


dOWN


1 Freight carrier (usually wooden) (6) 2 Central American country and city (6) 3 Cyprus port city (7) 6 Computer code (8) 7 DB_ , rail freight operator (8) 9 Pacific, for example (5)


11 Building for storing or handling freight (9)


12 Japanese-owned shipping line (3) 13 Scandinavian truck-maker (5) 14 Part of truck drivetrain (7) 16 Nordic country (7) 18 Small Suffolk resort - and container port (10)


22 Southern continent (9) 24 Port, location for bluebirds? (5) 26 Abu Dhabi-based airline (6) 27 Midlands rail terminal (5)


SOLUTION TO pREvIOUS ISSUE


ISSUE 3 2010


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