Straining against the tide

What caused the grounding of the Jody F Millennium and why is the ship still stranded in Poverty Bay? JO-MARIE BROWN investigates.

Sunrise in the first city in the world to see it is a special event, especially on the warm, calm morning of Waitangi Day, February 6.

As the sun spread its light across Poverty Bay and the foaming surf washed in on the spectacular, sweeping white sands of Waikanae Beach, 53-year-old Wayne Tautau was inspecting the rows of thick ropes stretching out from Gisborne's No 8 wharf. As head linesman he wanted to be sure that the Jody F Millennium was tightly secured.

Satisfied, he left the port around 7 am, telling his deputy to ring him if there were any problems. He didn't expect any, so there was nothing troubling him as he pushed the trolley around the supermarket later that morning.

But in just a few hours Tautau would find himself back at the wharf fighting to regain control of the runaway log carrier, which was bucking in the 3 to 4-metre swells surging into the small harbour.

"It started as nothing. It was a serene type of day but it turned into a real nightmare," he remembers.

The first hint of trouble came at around 1 pm - about the time Tautau was buying his Lotto ticket - when both the Jody and her neighbour, the slightly smaller Japanese-bound bulk carrier Asian Brier, began to shift around in a moderate swell.

Tautau and his eight-man crew - his company works on contract to the port - were asked to put shore wires on to the Brier to hold her steady while the last of her 1800-tonne cargo of squash was hoisted aboard.

Next door, the Jody's six shore wires and 12 thick ropes (the ship's lines), which had been in place since she arrived from Korea on February 3, were tightened again.

But as the large swell began surging into the harbour that afternoon, the strain on those 8cm-thick lines became too much.

The polyester ropes began pinging around like rubber bands, something that Tautau had never seen happen before in his 26-year history as a linesman.

"We were going from one end of the ship and replacing the shore wire and then hello, the [lines] would break," he says. "When they were snapping it sounded like a huge cannon going off. If we had been [in the way] there would have been body bags all over the place."

At 156m long, the Jody is one of the smaller log carriers to visit Port Gisborne. Vessels carrying freight and meat used to be the port's main visitors until 1967, when overseas berths were built to take larger ships.

The change in the local primary industry from farming to forestry means that the old freezing works site next to the port is now a log storage area, and wood-carrying ships such as the Jody last year accounted for almost half the 110 ships that used the port.

On Waitangi Day loading was halted around 4 pm, with the stevedores aboard scrambling to get equipment and themselves off the deck as the swells increased.

Around 20,000 tonnes of logs - just 6000 tonnes short of Jody's capacity - were already aboard and the 19-member Korean crew was left to lash them down.

"They were shitting themselves," says Tautau. "It was like someone was grabbing the bottom of the ship and pushing it right up out of the water and then wrenching it."

Other than the waves that began rolling in around lunchtime, there was little wind and no rain to alert people in Gisborne that a once-in-a-decade swell was on its way. But warnings were available.

A brutal southerly was biting into the South Island's east coast, creating powerful 5m swells that were racing up to Poverty Bay.

The MetService issued heavy-seas warnings as early as midday Tuesday, February 5, and forecast gale-force southwest winds.

The Gisborne District Council was specifically sent a swell warning at 1 pm on Waitangi Day to say 4m-5m waves would hit that evening.

But despite the council being the sole shareholder of Gisborne Port Company, Tautau says the first indication he had of bad weather was from his own observations that afternoon.

"It was a very eerie situation. I was watching the sea rise up against Butler's Wall [which protects the harbour on the seaward side] and I could actually feel something big," he says.

Later that night the sea would tear down the side of a slipway building and rip a winch from its foundations. Both had stood at the port since 1925.

Port Gisborne's pilot, Bob Sands, could see the potential danger that the Jody posed in this volatile weather. Given the number of shore wires that had already snapped, it was possible the linesman could lose control of the ship altogether and the Jody could smash away the port's wharves and slipways, along with any smaller vessels in her path.

Sands called in the port's two medium-sized resident tugs, the 30-tonne Titirangi and the 18-tonne Turihaua, to help. Both pushed their bows against the Jody's starboard side. But even that did not stop her violent movements.

Port chief executive officer Ben Tahata said the decision was then made to take the Jody 1500m out of the harbour and anchor off Young Nicks Head at the other end of Poverty Bay, where it was thought she would be safer.

The Asian Brier had departed on schedule at 7:10 pm and made it safely out of the port's 92m-wide channel and out to sea.

But the larger Jody needed much more water to float. The incoming tide would peak at 2 am. By 10 pm it was decided it was safe to go. Pilot Sands boarded the Jody and began guiding her out into the channel, the depth of which ranged between 10.5m and 12.6m depending on tides.

"Because of the extent of the swell we can only speculate as to the amount [of water] in the channel at the time of departure," Tahata says.

After helping the ship clear the sheltering Butler's Wall, Sands climbed back on board his boat, the Turanganui. From there, the Jody's Korean master was on his own.

Tautau watched the vessel's lights move into the distance - the huge waves illuminated in the dark as they began crashing over her deck.

"It happened just a matter of minutes after [the pilot] got off. The seas were so high that it just plucked the log boat from where it was going and moved it out to the right, towards the shore."

The Korean master radioed the pilot to say he had lost steerage, and the Titirangi and Turihaua tugs were called out to help. But the force of the sea meant rescue attempts were fruitless.

The Jody dropped anchors, but the ship went hard aground off Waikanae Beach, west of the port and the Turanganui River, where a sandbar slowly began forming along her seaward side.

Salvage experts and Maritime Safety Authority representatives were called in the next day. By Friday, Gisborne's worst fears were realised when the Jody began to leak oil from a damaged fuel tank just after midday.

The Jody is not the first ship to spew oil into New Zealand's waters, nor has she lost the most. The Korean trawler Dong Won, for example, spilled 300 tonnes of marine diesel when it sank off Stewart Island in 1998. But the heavy, viscous oil on board the Jody is much more difficult to clean up than diesel and has sparked the biggest oil-spill response operation seen in New Zealand.

So many people are involved in Operation Jody that they have flooded the city's hotels and motels, leaving tourists and regular visitors to sit on waiting lists for even the most undesirable rooms.

The Maritime Safety Authority and United Salvage - hired by the ship's owners - took charge, with district and regional councils, conservation staff, police, Navy and health officials falling in behind.

The national on-scene commander for the authority, John Lee-Richards, says co-ordinating such an effort is like having to set up a large business.

In the space of two days, a command structure was established and the district council's chambers were transformed into the incident command centre. Public relations staff were hired to manage the media horde that arrived.

Gisborne locals found themselves in the spotlight, some criticising the time it took to contain the 25-tonne oil spill and remove the Jody's remaining fuel and cargo to help get her off Waikanae Beach.

Helicopters began removing logs from the ship's deck a week after she first ran aground. Efforts to pump oil out of the damaged fuel tank did not begin until 3:25 pm on February 9 - more than 24 hours after the leak was discovered.

On Sunday, Maritime Safety Authority deputy director Bruce Maroc, fronted up to press conferences to outline what action was being taken. He was adamant Operation Jody was moving as fast as possible.

"There has been an enormous amount of work done getting equipment here," he explained. "Any operation requires a foundation ... that foundation is now being laid."

Heavy anchors, barges and tugs - some of which had to be flown in from Australia - eventually arrived in Gisborne. The powerful Pacific Chieftain and Seatow tugs, which would play a key role in refloating attempts, had to sail from New Plymouth and Picton respectively.

Weather forecasts also played a large part in deciding the order in which things should happen.

Stabilising the ship so she did not move any further towards shore was the first priority. The 20,000 tonnes of pine logs aboard certainly helped to keep her still.

As day after day the ship sat there so close to shore, the buzz around Gisborne grew.

Hundreds came down to the beach at the weekend or in their lunch hours to stare and speculate.

Such was the interest that schools organised bus trips so pupils could check progress.

But there was also great concern. The menacing pools of oil that washed up on an 8km stretch of Gisborne's beaches could have been an environmental disaster.

Oiled seagulls were easily spotted circling the shore last weekend and a temporary wildlife clinic was set up at the nearby AMP showgrounds to wash clean any birds brought in. As it was, only two patients were admitted - a red-billed gull and a pied shag. Both died.

Gisborne became the scene of the most extensive oiled wildlife preparations yet made in this country, with vets, medicines and temporary washing basins all ready to go.

But as senior lecturer in wildlife health at Massey University Dr Richard Norman pointed out, contaminated birds are often the most conspicuous part of any oil spill.

"In this situation it's probably not as important as actually dealing with the vessel and the oil itself," says Norman. "That's the priority because the sooner that ceases to be a risk the less the impact will be on wildlife in this area."

Extra precautions were also taken around Gisborne's Wherowhero Lagoon, were the rare New Zealand dotterel and white-fronted terns were nesting. Inflatable orange booms were set up to fend off any oil heading into nearby rivers or around the southern side of the bay. While some oil was found as far south as Young Nick's Head, most washed ashore at Waikanae and Midway beaches.

Round-the-clock efforts to prevent a spill, clean the spill, stop the ship from moving then get her to move again, have exhausted those involved and those watching it happen.

But the weather, which caused her to run aground in the first place, is having the final say. Plans to refloat her on Thursday night were abandoned in heavy seas. A steel cable to the tug snapped, leaving the Jody to resume her crawl along the beach by another 60m overnight.

By Friday officials were saying we would have to wait until the middle of next week before the seas calmed enough to let them refloat the Jody and ensure Gisborne's sparkling beaches were no longer at peril from this maritime disaster.

By then, the fate of the Jody F Millennium will be fading from people's minds.

But those directly involved will probably agree with linesman Tautau when he says: "It was the experience of my life."