The loneliness of the long distance cycler – An email compilation – By Brian Ratnayake
As it is about 72 years since I started “The Cyclists Association of Ceylon”, in 1953 and migrated to the UK 10 years later, in 1963, my memory has somewhat faded and many who i was associated with are dead and hopefully still cycling in the Heavens !!.
In pursuing my career in the U.K., I had to give up cycling. My memory of those early years and the sport in Ceylon have faded and apart from a few messages that appear from time to time as the following, I cannot recall much !.
I was 88y last December and still working in my Shipbroking career !.
There are several others with whom I associated with but cannot remember names or faces now !. Vernon De Alwis now lives in Australia and appears in ‘Old Joes’ pics from there.
Ashmore’s cousin – Allan Brace lives in Ilford, Essex, UK, just 10 minutes from my home !.
I also communicate by email with Archie Kiel who now lives in Toronto, who was also from my Wellawatte Club – Spartan Wheelers where Maurice Coomaravel was also a member !.
I left SL in April 1963 and continued my Shipbroking career at Brown, Jenkinson & Co. Ltd., in London. They gave me plenty of opportunity to learn all aspects of shipping in all their Agency branches at the main ports in the UK and in Hamburg. In 1974 I was transferred to the Chartering Dept and became a Chartering Clerk at the Baltic Exchange.
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I left them in January 1977 to take a post of Chartering Director of Ippocampos Maritime (London) Ltd. Having learned the Shipowning, S&P side of the business, I launched my own Shipbroking Company – Lanka Shipping (London) Ltd., and via Lester Weinman/Nahil Wijesuriya’s East West Shipping, I successfully wrested the Ceylon Shipping Corp Chartering business from Unimar Hamburg, who hitherto were fleecing CSC !. Of Course I had a lot of other business Time chartering a small fleet of loggers for the Indonesian Islands trade and supplying Bunkers in Singapore, Colombo, West coast India and in the Redsea. When my Log trade period charters ended in 1989, I joined the Commodity and Shipmanagement Company – Holbud Limited – with whom I am still working !!. Immediately I joined them I was sent off to ‘troubleshoot’ their grain trade out of the Sudan whilst loading our own tonnage – mainly SD14 and Freedoms at that time. I then helped to increase the size of our tonnage and for the next 10 years I was travelling worldwide at short notice to liaise between Shippers of cargo on our managed and chartered Handy size and Panamax Bulk carriers.
We now manage a fleet of 19 Panamax bulk carriers and operate about 50 more Voyage chartered Panamax vessels at any given time, to service very large contracts we have to supply Wheat, Maize, Barley, Rice, Sugar and Soyabeans to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and East Africa. Our purchases of Maize and Barley from Ukraine are temporarily suspended due to the War there.
However we continue to buy and ship from European ports, Latvia and Russian Black Sea ports, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the odd cargo from Australia.
In 2002 when my dearest Gladys was diagnosed with Cancer, I ceased travelling to nurse her until she died in November, 2005 !.
By that time technology had developed to the extent that Cargo Superintendents could forward pictures by Computers of grain quality and/or physical loading problems on the vessels and there was no reason for me to be on the spot to solve problems !.
Apart from gaining expert knowledge of grain shipments from Argentina and Brazil to where I had been travelling most of the time, I opted for spending more time in office, doing Post Fixture work and acting as an adviser, allowing me more time to reorganise my life without Gladys.
I also had time to concentrate on continuing active membership of the Peterite OBU UK branch that I founded in 1978.
After 2 years of living alone, in 2007, I married Deepthi De Silva, a Flight Lt. in the SLAF, and having been de-mobbed, came to live with me in 2008. She is a PhD and Senior Lecturer of Cyber Security at the University of Hertfordshire.
…… and so life goes on !.
I will be 86y in December and have a few physical problems which receive good treatment from my local Hospital and GP.
Deepthi and I are hoping to be in Colombo for Christmas this year and will give you a shout if we can spare some time !.
Your friend – Clifford Richards has been booked again by my OBU to MC our Centenary celebratory Dinner Dance ‘La Bamba Nite 2022’ in London on 17th September 2022 !!.
We have also engaged several other star performers from Colombo – the Band of Hector Dias and D Major, Sohan Weerasinghe, Stephanie Siriwardhana and Janaka Palapathwala.
