NavList:

Geoff Hitchcox, you wrote:

"Could the location be Auckland Wharf..."

Could be... could be... yes. :) The clue that I assume David Pike was calling out with the subject of his message was the flag flying on the vessel (a visiting flag). At a quick glance, it's either the Australian flag or the New Zealand flag. The red in the stars of the Southern Cross on the flag seems to confirm N.Z., but more evidence would be nice. We do have more: the same flag appears in the sail of the fast cat in the background, and a little image searching identifies that boat as a New Zealand team America's Cup contender. My best guess is that's the AC50 class (or predecessor?). Other articles online tell us that the Chinese ship in question visited Auckland in early October 2016. Hence my suggestion regarding the altitude of the Sun at the time.

I'm still mildly curious about the exact location of the photographer who took the photo. By the way, thanks for mentioned that the Washington Post got the location right, and I notice they also did --as they are supposed to with images licensed via Getty-- and credited the photographer, Fiona Goodall. For the location, I didn't notice right away, but it's taken looking through a storm fence, which is out of focus but has left its pattern in the image. It's almost surprising that the image is usable, but being so far out of focus, it doesn't seem to do much harm. I assume there's telephoto compression in this shot, and the pier with the newly-delivered cars is actually a considerable distance in the foreground from the pier where the Chinese ship is docked.

I see in today's news, just now, that the Yuan Wang 5 has now arrived in Sri Lanka.

Frank Reed