Mastering The High Seas

Captain Sione Tu'ungafasi...one of the many Tongans who have made successful careers in ocean-going ships.

Last April, Captain Sione Tu'ungafasi, 37, became master of the Fua Kavenga II, a 7000-ton container ship delivered to the Pacific Forum Line (PFL) in January 2002 by a Chinese shipyard.

The ship is his first command. "The first night I was not able to sleep because I was thinking about the ship, the crew. If anything happened, all the responsibility was on myself and for the first week it was very hard to sleep. Every night I put up the curtain so I can see forward, and when the ship started pitching I had to get up and check. Now I'm used to it."

The Fua Kavenga is at present under charter to Neptune Line, one of several shipping companies Pacific Forum Line (PFL) has as pool partners, and which operates her as Capitaine Tasman.

Her twin sister, the Forum Samoa II, came from the same shipyard. The two ships are owned by a German company, the Hartman Group, and time chartered from it.

PFL has an option to buy them in eight or 10 years. Tonga and Samoa each contributed US$1 million to their cost and are paid interest for their money.

Fua Kavenga is owned in the name of Ocean Royal Shipping Company, of Limasol, Cyprus, where she is registered, but registry will be transferred to Tonga. Forum Samoa is on the Samoan registry.

Captain Tu'ungafasi is one of the many Tongans who've made successful careers on ocean-going ships.

He went to sea in 1982 as a cadet officer with Warner Pacific Line, owned by an Australian, Peter Warner, who made a point of recruiting young Tongans for training for a career at sea.

He left Warner Pacific in 1988 as a second mate to join the Tongan government's Shipping Corporation of Polynesia and joined PFL as chief mate of the old Fua Kavenga in 1998.

"The old Fua Kavenga was a very good ship for the islands because of her stern loading ramp for mobile loaders," he says.

This (Fua Kavenga/Capitaine Tasman) ship is very quick for operation in island ports because of her 60-ton cranes. The old ship had only one 25-ton crane.

"With this (new) ship we have experienced a lot of problems, especially in bad weather, because the deck is very low and most of the time the sea is breaking on to the deck that we can't go out when there are problems with containers. If we have seas from the side, the ship will be rolling like hell, and when it's from ahead, it pitches too much."

But the new Fua Kavenga is "the best," ship he's worked on, he says. He has a Yugoslav chief engineer, Filipino officers, engineers, an administrator and electrician, with the remainder of the crew being Tongans, eight cadets included.

"At the moment we don't have enough officers in Tonga, he says. "Other companies offer better salaries and that's why most of the officers are working with them."

With the Forum Samoa running on the same route but in the opposite direction, the two ships supply a 15-day service to their ports of call. Fua Kavenga's 30-day voyage begins at Brisbane, then Sydney, Melbourne, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago, Nuku'alofa, Suva, and back to Brisbane." "We maintain that schedule pretty tightly. Sometimes we are one day late when we get (to a port) but we always pick up and get back on schedule." All the cargo is carried in the ship's 650 containers except for coconut, soya and canola oil carried in tanks.

The efficiency of ports varies. In Fiji, it is not going forward. When it rains, stevedores stop working. In the old days, they still worked despite the rain.

There is no need to stop because cargo is inside containers and it is only a question of supplying a raincoat and hat. In Samoa there's a very big improvement. Labour is very good. They can make 30 (container) moves an hour in Apia; Suva has a maximum of 20; and Pago Pago is the same. In Nuku'alofa, it's not bad, 20 to 25 an hour.

"Australia, I can say, is the worst. Sometimes they can be very good, very quick and sometimes not. Slow up to 18; fast they can make up to 28."

Tu'ungafasi does 10 months at sea and then has two months off to be with his wife and three children in Auckland. Filipino crew members work on 10-month contracts, while Tongan crew members have four months on and one month off. At sea, much time is spent on keeping the ship and her machinery in first class conditions.

"That is our main job onboard for the owners, to make sure everything is running and working."

A 30-minute video show on the ship's safety is a daily compulsory requirement. Then it's entertainment shows during leisure hours."

What are a ship's master's worries? "The main problem is a silly mistake by the chief mate who is responsible for looking after cargo stability." Calculating the way the containers are loaded is absolutely critical. An error could make the ship so top heavy that it could capsize; that's what happened a few year ago to a container ship at Suva wharf.

The permutations, which must also take account of the containers are destined for what ports, are complex.

"We have to get it just right," Tu'ungafasi says.

"It's not an easy permutation but now we have a stability programme in the computer. It's very quick. In the olden days we had to do it by hand in three or four hours."