KEY POINTS:
Berthing at Fergusson container terminal this morning could be the solution to all those Rugby World Cup nightmares. The paddock-sized crane-carrier, Zhenhua 11.
Several months ago, when the waterfront stadium was but a twinkle in Sport Minister Trevor Mallard's fevered imagination, I suggested a floating alternative to the $320 million world cup stadium then being proposed for Eden Park.
Bring in a second-hand super-tanker, cantilever some stands off the sides, create a playing pitch on the deck, moor it down on the waterfront and hey presto, an instant kitset stadium.
Then after the cup tournament was over, we could sell it to the next bunch of civic dreamers chasing the alchemic dream of economic transformation through the miracle of rugby.
Disappointingly, the idea was before its time and did not take off ... although the possibility that my raising of a waterfront venue might have sparked the ensuing Bledisloe versus Queens Wharf fiasco does give me sleepless nights.
But now, with the permanent wharf-based stadium sunk and just about everyone dragging their feet on Eden Park, let me make a last plug for the world's first floating rugby venue.
The Zhenhua 11 is the ideal starting base. The flat surface between the front and aft structures is more than 150 metres long, which would easily accommodate a rugby pitch, in-goal areas included. At 40 metres wide, which is not enough, but the overhang of the cranes carried here from China shows that cantilevering a pitch and some temporary stands over each side would surely be a simple enough task.
As for bearing the weight of 60,000 fans plus seating, well, no worries. This ship left China with six, 1250 tonne cranes, three of which were off-loaded in Australia.
All told, that's a load of 7500 tonnes or 7,500,000kg. The average weight of a grown male is about 80kg, so you could get 60,000 average chaps aboard and still have about 3000 tonnes to play with. (Please, no correspondence will be entered into regarding the arithmetic.)
It's not as though all the seating would have to go aboard. What's to stop temporary stands being built on one of the finger wharves? Especially as, with a bit of luck, by 2011 the port company will have declared Queens Wharf surplus to its needs and surrendered it for public use.
What's devilishly tricky about the Zhenhua 11 is that it's a semi-submersible vessel that can be sunk or raised to the level of the wharf by pumping water in and out of huge ballast tanks.
This means that the world cup final won't have to be timed to coincide with the ebb and flow of Auckland's tides.
As for costs, port insiders tell me they could fix me up with the Zhenhua 11 or one of its sister ships for US$100,000 ($144,000) a day.
Measured against having to spend $26 million on a pedestrian bridge from Kingsland station across Sandringham Rd to Eden Park as part of the world cup preparations, the ship rental sounds a bargain.
And while we're talking dream schemes, I have the ideal operator to make it happen, Dr Rodney Wilson. Over the years, while the rest of us fantasise, Dr Wilson has quietly got on with the job.
As director of the Auckland City art gallery in the 1980s, he masterminded a makeover of the institution. Later, he was founder director of the National Maritime Museum, building it from scratch.
Then he took up the reins at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, driving its just-completed $115 million expansion.
His most remarkable skill has been to achieve all three projects with a minimum of fuss and controversy - well public fuss and controversy anyway.
Who else in Auckland can you think of who could have persuaded everyone in this Tower of Babel that dropping a wooden spinning top into the empty void in the centre of the old museum building was the answer to the museum's growing pains?
He's planning to retire next year, which seems very unreasonable in our hour - or is that decade? - of need.
Rodney, there's a world cup to organise, a stadium to be conjured up and money to be squeezed out of governments local and national. You can't go.
