Cuban shipmaster Captain Domingo Pomo waxed lyrical over Pendennis and St Mawes Castle as the refrigerated cargo ship Idorene Reefer came into an anchorage off St Mawes to receive fuel oil from the Falmouth Oil Services bunker barge.
Cameras rolled and crew members came up from below decks as Domingo translated the potted history I gave him about the castles.
Domingo explained that Idorene Reefer had carried 600 tonnes of lobster and squid from Cuba to Villagarcia, North West Spain. He was not looking forward to his next voyage, loading fish in the Faeroes for Lagos, Nigeria, a port where violence, piracy and corruption makes it one of the worst ports in the world today.
Two hours later on the Indian Reefer I renewed my acquaintance with Captain Carsten Sogaard, a Danish shipmaster I have met many times in the past ten years.
Indian Reefer was almost fully laden with cartons of frozen chickens loaded in the Brazilian port of Itajai and destined for St Petersburg, Russia. The US and Russia have a poultry trade dispute that has badly disrupted refrigerated cargo trades.
Likewise Saudi Arabia has banned the import of European chicken amid concern over artificial hormones, a move that will hit the French market which supplies 110,000 tonnes of poultry a year to Saudi Arabia.
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