Peaceful warriors

Of all the assorted vessels that dock in Port Melbourne, none have quite as turbulent a history as the Rainbow Warrior, the original incarnation of which having famously been bombed by French secret agents. Fortunately there were no frogmen lurking around the third incarnation of the Warrior; a purpose-built $28m electrically-assisted sailing yacht, as she glided in on Wednesday.

The guided tours at Princes Pier on Sunday, raising awareness of plans for massive expansion of coal shipping over the Great Barrier Reef, seemed particularly poignant as another load of aviation fuel was toasted overhead. Meanwhile across the water Sea Shepherd, the renegade offshoot of Greenpeace, limped back from their latest run-in with the Japanese "cetacean research" fleet.