A new restaurant with a difference (and a great view)


We are always quick to berate those responsible when something goes wrong at sea, in this case the grounding of a freighter that lost her anchor. But I am always happy to praise people for their entrepreneurialism and this is a fine example.


Local officials (and hungry would-be diners one presumes) at Vizag are preparing for the debut of a restaurant aboard the Bangladeshi freighter which came to grief in Visakhapatnam, India by turning what some might view as an undesirable marine casualty into a tourist attraction.


The 2009-built Maa is a 260-foot, 3,000 dwt freighter with ample deck space and hold capacity for a conversion. On October 12, 2020, while waiting to take on a load of stone at Vizag, she lost her anchor in a storm and went aground. Under other circumstances, this turn of affairs might have led to a legal dispute between the local government and the vessel’s insurer, followed by a costly wreck removal. Instead, the province of Andhra Pradesh took notice of the wreck’s popularity among tourists and decided to make the most of it. An Indian contractor removed about 25,000 gallons of fuel from the Maa’s tanks, so the pollution risk was minimized - all that was needed was a concessionaire to operate the site as a tourist attraction, now duly granted.


Edith Piaf’s ‘love boat’ up for grabs at auction


French singer Edith Piaf’s ‘love boat’, which she was rumoured to use for secret trysts, is up for sale at Sotheby’s International Realty for just shy of £1.5million. According to the Daily Mail, the 100ft Flamant Rose, or ‘Pink Flamingo’ in English, supposedly served as a love nest for Piaf and French-Algerian boxer Marcel Cerdan.


The current owner is celebrity hypnotist and author Valerie Austin, whose husband James Pool, bought the boat for her as gift 25 years ago.


“Edith Piaf had the boat when it was her happy time, before her boyfriend was killed,” Austin told the Evening Standard. “She used to do séances there because it has an iron hull, which is supposed to be spiritually electric. I’ve had quite a few top psychics on board, and they all love the feeling of it.”


Guy Bradshaw, who is handling the sale, says: “The Flamant Rose is not just a houseboat, you are owning a unique piece of history with arguably one of the world’s most romantic stories.”


The X-Press Pearl disaster has deposited over 70 billion plastic nurdles in the sea


I end this month’s column on a rather sombre note. If you followed the marine news last year, the disaster that befell the X-Press Pearl will still be firmly in your mind. It was a real shocker.


And now we start to learn of the true legacy of the accident, which has resulted in the spillage of an estimated 70 billion nurdles (spherical pieces of plastic) into the ocean.


Nurdles are the preproduction plastic used to manufacture a wide range of end products and you do not need me to tell you that the sea is not the best place for them! The report states that exposure to combustion, heat, and chemicals led to agglomeration, fragmentation, charring, and chemical modification of the plastic, creating an unprecedented complex spill of visibly burnt plastic and unburnt nurdles. These pieces span a continuum of colours, shapes, sizes, and densities with high variability that could impact cleanup efforts, alter transport in the ocean, and potentially affect wildlife.


A sign of the sad times we live in I guess… Mike Schwarz


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