From able seaman to admiral, from cook to captain, the navy is delighted with the handling of its new patrol corvette.

The four ships -- weighing 3 500 tons and 121m long -- are a great step up from the 400-ton strike craft they are replacing.

Serving on the ships have become so popular *1 it is causing staffing problems elsewhere in the navy, said naval spokesman Captain Rusty Higgs.

Captain Kevin Packer, 44, commands SAS Mendi, the youngest of the four Valour class patrol corvettes. He is in charge of her 64 officers and other ranks, including seven women.

Overnight on Wednesday, he entertained a group of Gauteng and East London journalists as the ship made way up the east coast to Durban for her first port visit there.

Some of the journalists, including Sapa's reporter, had made a similar trip aboard some strike craft in April last year.

The old missile boats were cramped, cold, stuffy, old fashioned and noisy. This, along with their wild bobbing and yawing, made them miserable to their crews and visitors. Not so the Mendi.*1

Although most of the photographers and some reporters, including one from a leading business daily, went down with sea sickness they could do so in comfortable quarters *1 and a spacious head *1 -- as naval toilets are called. By morning all felt much better, and some even made it to breakfast.

The Mendi's name carries much sentiment in the Eastern Cape. The sinking of the original Mendi, and the bravery of several hundred members of the then SA Native Labour Contingent who drowned in the English Channel in October 1917 are remembered to this day.

While in East London the new Mendi made history for itself when the Eastern Cape's premier Nosimo Balindlela convened a provincial cabinet meeting *1 in the ship's wardroom on Wednesday morning, the first time in South African naval history this has happened.

Balindlela was by all accounts very much taken with the ship and her company.

This soon rubbed off on the media.

By Thursday morning photographers, reporters and the ship's company alike were having a fine time *1 as the ship carried out some high speed manoeuvres off the Durban Bluff.

These included a so-called "crash stop", where the ship reverses its water jet in order to come to a dead stop from its top speed of somewhere above 30 knots (30 x 1,85km/h) in less than 200 metres -- or one and a half ship's lengths. The spray thrown up by the thrust reversal, is a site (sic - sight) to behold *1.

Shortly after these manoeuvres the Mendi entered Durban with an escort of two air force Oryx and two BK117 helicopters and two tugs blowing water and hooting their horns in welcome.

An army band played as Zulu dancers and Durban school children *1 welcomed the Mendi to the East Coast port.

With acknowledgement to Leon Engelbrecht and Sapa.

*1 But can she fight at sea and win?