In September 1976 yours truly and a very good friend took off on an adventure across the Atlantic Ocean in a freighter, the Nai Mara. We drove to Norfolk, Va and stopped in a small restaurant for lunch. In a phone booth in the back of the restaurant we looked through the yellow pages under freighter companies and found one that was head quartered out of Italy which was our destination and yes they sometimes took aboard passengers.
We paid for passage that day and were told to go home and wait. We would get a phone call within the next couple of weeks. When we got the call we had 48 hours to meet the ship in Norfolk and we would be on our way to Italy. The voyage would take two weeks, and although our destination was Italy, we would not know if we would port into Genova, Napoli, or Brindisi until we entered the Mediterranean Sea.
We would be transporting coal from the Appalachian Mountains to the European Continent. It was an amazing and rather hot and noisy site watching the huge machines spew coal into the holds of the freighter.
Upon hearing of a friend taking an extended trip by ship today I got to thinking about this adventure some 36 years ago. I googled the Nai Mara and low and behold I found the photo pictured below. In 1976 the Nai Mara was still a young ship but today she no longer sails the seas.
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| Top photo © zahan |
Kozmicdogz Breaks Loose 