N.50°47’10” E.0°58’06”
The ‘Joni Ritscher’ leaves berth 941. On the dock the cranes and the mountains of steel containers are still.
In the open water ahead there is a channel marked out with slowly pulsing lights. The ship glides between the glowing beacons that sit atop the swaying buoys. Green lights pass by on the left, red lights wink by on the right.
Shadows of ships pass near by. A towering cliff-face of steel passes on our port side and for a while blocks out the entire sky. The other container-ships make the Joni Ritscher seem like a river barge. The sky gets darker and the waterway gets wider. On the distant banks we pass power stations and chemical works – castles of white, industrial lights and a wobbling flame of burning gas.
The last lights are behind us and in the blackness we move with the swell. The engines throb through the ship.