Shipping Briefs

• The MV “Hotunui”, in the news a year ago with a fire in the engine room while on a voyage from Noumea to Suva, has been sold by owners Luggate Game Packers, of New Zealand, to Atlantic Fishing and Freezing Inc. of Los Angeles, and will be based in the Philippines. It was on June 13 last year that “Hotunui” was crippled with an ex plosion which blew out a crankcase door and injured a seaman. She was towed 150 miles to Suva by the Fiji tug “Wallacia” and repaired by Bish Ltd who rebuilt her main engine. • Wartime mines are being blown up outside Port Moresby’s shipping channel by three vessels of the Royal

Australian Navy—the minesweeper HMAS “Teal” and mine hunters HMAS “Curlew” and “Snipe”. The operation is being carried out during the first two weeks in August as part of a two-year stint by the RAN to free the PNG coastline of all known minefields which were laid during World War 11. • A piece of machinery from the ill-fated Union Steam Ship Company’s ferry “Wahine”, which was wrecked in a storm outside Wellington Harbour four years ago with the loss of more than 50 lives, will be operating in Suva shortly. It is an anchor winch which was salvaged from the “Wahine” and sold to Millers Ltd of Fiji, who will use it to haul

ships up the new 200-ton slipway now being built at the company’s shipyard in Walu Bay, Suva. 9 NEL’s “Lae Express” has now extended her Sydney-Brisbane-Lae run to Rabaul, mainly at the request of exporters and to build up the service in readiness for the appearance of NEL’s third ship “Kieta Express” due in September. • The Australian and New Zea land maritime unions’ boycott of French ships in protest against the nuclear tests at Mururoa was still on in July. The boycott had effectively tied up all French ships in the Islands.

Most of them were anchored at Noumea.