February 12th, 2000

This week ten years ago, Bow Wave was going out to some 4000 Readers and edition 64 marked the day when the e-zine transferred to the Lyris-Dundee people in Michigan who specialise in mass mailings. Previosly the whole thing was broken up into mailing lists of 500 or so and mailed out from the editor's own desktop. This eventually overwhelmed the capacity of the system, causing a horrible viscous circle under which the same edition was mailed out 50 times. Readers were, in the circumstances, remarkably patient. It being close to the renewal time for P&I, there was naturally an item dealing with the season:

P&I Renewal Season

A week before the P&I renewal season reaches its traditional date of 20th February finds the market in fairly stolid mood. Many of the clubs are it is said not finding the across the board increases of 10 per cent all that easy to gather in. The recent and unfortunately timed downgrading in the rating of the Skuld Club ought to see a few more departures from that quarter.

From this month's Insurance Insider Bevis Marks writes:

The long strength sapping soft marine market of the last 5 or 6 years caused fewer delapidations to the house of P&I than down Rue de Regret where the hull and cargo men live, but you can still see the signs of strain and slippage. It can be dreary to live in a market which is so saturated. Wide grins appear on faces often only when one of the diminishing number of players sickens and indubitably begins to die.

Ten Years Later this aviation story still strikes a chord. The link still works too.

And Finally...

It used to be that many of the world's more obscure berths and parking stands were occupied by ships and planes of the former Soviet Union under arrest whose owners were suffering financial woes. And there are still some of these around.

Courtesy of the fabulous Airliners.Net newsletter, we learn that the Antonov aircraft at Maastricht Airport has finally departed for a new career in the Ukraine. Here is the story:

UR-82070 -- After having been impounded for three-and-a-half years, the time for departure finally arrived. In spite of the rain and fog, hundreds of people had come to the airport to watch. A last test run on the runway was made to check everything and to honour all the people watching. Then Saturday, Feb.3, 2000, 10.10h the moment of truth had come. The Antonov test pilot selected full power, she started to roll, and then finally lift-off.

see the site at:

http://www.airliners.net/