Rainbow Warrior III

I had a brilliant day trip to Docklands to see Greenpeace's brand new Rainbow Warrior III yesterday.

One of the unsinkable speed boats

The new campaign ship was purpose built for campaigning on the high seas - with unsinkable speedboats  which can do 40 knots (feels like 120mph a crew member explained), a helipad, and a satellite link up to stream live video to the world's media.

Rainbow Warrior III

The ground-breaking design also includes A-frame masts (90% of its power will come from renewables), which are stronger and can support a much larger sail area than conventional masts.

The A-frame masts

Over 100,000 supporters around the world contributed to the funding of the ship - many of their names are on the green 'Thank you' poster. It felt like a large proportion of them came to Docklands to admire the ship they'd contributed to. Some were sailing enthusiasts (I talked to a yacht designer), others were old enough to be my grand mother.

I got to climb into one of the old zodiacs that they used to pile into to form a human shield between the whaling boats and the whales!

Cormorants waiting

Wandering around the docks afterwards, there was a heron and some cormorants tucked away in abandoned, undeveloped corners. There's not many of those left around Canary Wharf.

A heron in East India dock