36 Boating New Zealand
“The birds are all thoroughly checked over and go straight into
an aviary when they get here,” he replied. “The only contact they
have with other birds is when we sell them to bird collectors.
They’re worth big money.”
I thought about sailing the ocean; sails bellied with wind, as
free as (pardon the pun) a bird. The boat heeling to an ocean
breeze, ringed by a clear horizon and ceilinged by a glittering
starry sky after dark.
Then I imagined a prison cell, walls, bunk and toilet with a
small barred aperture in the door and daily shuffles round a
walled yard for exercise – not to mention the dubious sexual
practices of my likely jail mates.
“Thanks,” I said, “but no thanks... I’d rather not.”
On another occasion I got talking to a bystander on the dock
in Bristol, England. He asked the dimensions of my boat, Elkouba- length, beam and whether she had headroom. Harmless interest
from a fellow yachtie, I thought.
But he returned
the next day with
two others, all with
the beatific glow of
reborn Christians.
“I’ve worked it out,”
my acquaintance
from the previous
day said. “I reckon
you can fit about 60
cartons of bibles in
there.” The men were members of a prominent Christian group,
they explained, and wanted someone to smuggle bibles across
the Mediterranean into Algeria.
Smuggle bibles into a Muslim country? The likely penalty if
caught would make a US penitentiary look like a Kiwi play centre.
Anyway my hackles rose at the effrontery of people foisting their
religion on others.
“No thanks,” I said, “I’m a Muslim.”
A few months later we were tied up in the harbour at
Lerwick in the Shetland Islands when three jolly middle-aged
Norwegians turned up in a mid-sized fibreglass production
boat. Next day a truck appeared on the wharf beside them and
the driver and boat crew chain-ganged cases of whisky on board
and below-decks.
“Duty-free whisky here costs $15 a bottle – and sells for about
$75 in Norway. It is good business, no?” one of the Norwegians
said. “The only people who get hurt is the government. This boat
makes a lot of happy people.” The trio left port with an efficiency
born of practice and the overloaded boat waddled away nor-east
towards the isolated fjords of Norway.
We just smiled and watched the wall. BNZRIGHT & BELOW
Rare birds account
for a popular – and
seemingly very
profitable – global
smuggling operation.