Polynesia

History
Jan 1979. Launched for Taikoo Navigation.

Mar. 1979. Delivered to the Polynesia Line Ltd. Monrovia. The Polynesia Line was 49% owned by China Navigation Co. and 51% owned by Marine Containerships, San Francisco. Polynesia Line as managers. Hull was painted blue with a grey waterline Funnel colours, blue with a white band, through which was a diagonal blue stripe. Total crew 28.

1988. Lengthened to 162.1 m., and a fifth crane added. Tonnage now 10,774 grt.,14,646 dwt. as in illustration.

2000. Renamed "Saipan Voyager"

February 9th 2013. Broken up at Alang, beached on February 15th.2013.

Service
Polynesia Line.

Events / Stories
The "Poly" was always a terrifically popular ship with her officers and crew - the first CNCo ship to carry Filipino ratings.

However, mention of the name "POLYNESIA" could be almost guaranteed to send the charming, personable and very Anglophile head of IHI's Commercial Department, Hiroshi (Dave) Iwamoto, into a decline.

Marine Containerships wanted a simple cheap ship which could be sold as logger in the event that the Polynesia Line trade failed. An order was therefore placed, through IHI, with a "third division" yard that built loggers for one of their standard loggers, but to be fitted with demountable cell guides. The yard drew up the plans, then comfessed to IHI that they were not sure they could work to containership tolerances, and in order to salvage the situation the ship was actually built by IHI, at their vast Aioi yard, but to the drawings of the third division yard. IHI ran up a huge loss on the contract.

The cell guides were never demounted.

Docking the "Polly" was always a problem, because her run meant that she could only be docked in the States. A docking at Todd Shipyards, San Francisco, produced a bill that was positively eye watering - and more than double the estimate. CNCo refused to pay; Todd threatened to arrest - CNCo proposed to Todd that since both parties were grown ups a joint inspection of the ship should be made at her next call to see if agreement could be reached. As Ron Sullivan and Andrew Craig-Bennett left the office to catch the flight Jimmy Lough remarked, "There go Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!"

We did agree, and at the subsequent dinner Todd confessed that their problem had been that the team working on the ship had only ever done Government work before!

The problem of where to dock the ship on a subsequent occasion was solved by a grounding in Pago which ruptured the fore peak tank - this provided an opportunity to combine the repairs with a lengthening operation back in Japan.