Life on board the Manawanui

If you were all at sea on a blustery Thursday in mid-March, a few days following the low pressure system that dropped buckets of rain on the Far North, you would have seen the Royal New Zealand Navy ship Manawanui manoeuvring offshore in decidedly choppy conditions. She wasn't guarding us from potential attack although she does have munitions on board, as all military vessels do.

She was there as a training exercise to look at the sunken remains of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, now lying as an artificial reef beneath the Bay of Islands. Her primary role is that of diving tender, as a survey ship and as a search and rescue vessel when the occasion demands. She is relatively small as most naval ships go but she's nifty and can turn practically on her own length in a few minutes.

The Manawanui is under the command of expatriate Englishman Lieutenant Commander Gavin Henry. She has a full complement of 24 officers and ratings but on this day she was carrying fewer divers. Some of her experienced divers had been called to help locate bodies from the Easy Rider disaster off the coast of Stewart Island. It's specialised work and in fact the last deployment of Petty Officer Diver Darren Mills, who briefed the visiting children, was in Afghanistan clearing mines in support of the USD-led coalition.

Because of her specialist role, Manawanui is fitted with a triple lock compression chamber, a wet diving bell and a 15-ton crane that lowers it, electric and gas welding equipment and a lathe. She's action-ready for the peace keeping and maritime security missions the region might demand.

There were a few others that day who might have wished the Manawanui wasn't quite so manoeuvrable. They were students from Whangaroa College who had been invited to spend the day on board courtesy of the Royal New Zealand Navy. Except some of them didn't even make it to the ship before they were heaving over the side of the tender that took them out to the ship. Of the ten senior students on the trip organised by local Kaeo police constable, Richard Avery, practically half didn't handle the conditions as well as they would have liked.

But, that's life at sea and getting one's sea legs and stomach to co-operate at the same time to form some stability takes some experience. For Charlotte Morunga, however, the pitching and rolling exacerbated by the flat-bottomed Manawanui only encouraged her to investigate joining the navy when she's finished school. The others might vie foradesk job.