Re the Rena debacle and the Schelde Trader's engine stoppage. I have been pondering, while charting my way around the snooker tables at the Mount RSA, this question. How many foreign and maybe locally registered ships do we have charging around our vast coastline with faulty and poorly serviced engines that can stop mid beat, ships being crewed by people that seem unable to read a chart, keep a visual watch on night shift and plot a straight course right across a well documented and charted reef at Full Ahead? I think we may well see another 'Orchestrated Litany of Lies” come ashore.
P.S. May I congratulate those people who have voluntarily given their time to clean up our beaches of which I am unable to do because of health constraints and to those salvers and Harbour pilots who have done a wonderful job to date?

Bill Wilkinson, Mount Maunganui.