End Of An Era

Hey Blog fans. It seems like months since I last put anything up on here, when in fact, I think, it's only been about a week. Well, we've been in Safaga for a couple of days, and had an absolute blast. Some of the lads, including myself, have been off to stay in hotels and B&B's to get away from the ship. Some of the guys who stayed on board went to play golf at the Cascades Golf and Country Club. I'm not sure how many played, but by all accounts the course is spectacular. There was supposed to be a football match between us and, I think, the Egyptian Navy. However, by all accounts the match was called off as the lads were boarding the bus to get there. I believe that they were not too pleased, especially as a couple of those lads were actually staying in hotels 45 minutes to an hour away and had made the trip back!!!

As ever, when we arrived in port there was the usual gash (rubbish) ditching, and food stores to bring on. By the time all of this was on and squared away, it was about 2pm. If I remember right, leave was piped around that time and there was a massive bomb burst to get on the transport to the hotels. The hotel I was staying in was called Albatross Resort and was part of a massive complex. One of the other lads, Conks, and myself managed to get a great deal and ended up fully inclusive for around £35 each. When we got there we checked in and went to the room to ditch the bags and had arranged to meet the other lads who were staying there in the bar about five minutes later. We got to our room and opened the door. Strait away there was a problem! Only one double bed!! Not on your life! Conks is a nice lad but sorry, I know which side I bat for. We were back down to reception quick as a flash and thankfully changed our room strait away, with no questions asked. Later on that day, we went out in search of night life. We found it in the shape of Ministry Of Sound and Hedkandi, both were excellent, with a lot to offer. We also had a little perk in that if we showed our I.D we got in free! You see, forces do get discount in some places, shame it’s not like this in the U.K………. Ok, now this is going to be the last time I make an entry onto this blog. There are reasons for this and basically, I was a little naïve, and didn’t realise that there are rules and regulations for us service personnel regarding this sort of thing! However, follow this link Robby's Richmond Blog and it will re-direct you to “Robby’s Richmond Blog”. I hope that all of you that have read this day to day goings on of a modern sailor have enjoyed, and maybe even had a laugh at my expense! Hope to see you all on the flip side (the new blog)
Chow, for now.

Defence Watches

Well, we're now through the Suez Canal, and what an eventful time that was!!! I can't remember if I'd mentioned that we are in defence watches or not. But we are, we are doing twelve hours about. There are four LET(WE)'s, that's what I am, a Leading Engineering Technician (Weapon Engineer) and eight ET(WE)'s. We are then split into two watches and work about with two LET's and Four ET's. We're splitting the day 0100 to 1300 and 1300 to 0100. My watch is working the 0100 to 1300. But I digress, i was telling you about the Suez transit. We started the transit at about 0200 yesterday and all was going well, until one of the ships in our southbound convoy had some sort of engineering failure and ran aground! Great. we had to anchor for about six hour whilst the problem was fixed and the ship was towed from it's beach. What usually happens with the Suez transit is that there is a Northbound convoy and a Southbound one. The Southbound convoy will anchor about halfway through in an area called "The Bitter Lakes", whilst at anchor the Northbound convoy will pass strait through and then the Southbound convoy will weigh anchor and proceed South. However, with what happened today, it was the Northbound convoy that anchored and we passed strait through, to make up the time we had lost. As i said, we are now through and continuing onwards to Safaga, Egypt. We have a couple of days there for an official reception and a little R&R. and then we head of again for a rather longer stint at sea, again in defence watches. until we reach Bahrain. Changing the subject now, from me and my life, I've had an E-mail from my wife. She has been working very hard over the last couple of weeks, preparing her youth clubs Christmas pantomime! A very good variation of Snow White. My daughter, Jessica, was playing the wicked witch, or stepmother, i can never remember which one it is! Apparently it was excellent and the Mum's and Dad's had all helped chip in and it went off without a hitch. Well done to all involved, especially my lovely wife who has had a lot on her plate and has surpassed all expectations and made me very proud.

Suez Transit

Well, we've now left Cyprus, and what an expensive time that turned out to be!! We arrived on Monday the 2nd at about 0930. We finished work at about 1500 and had a bus ride to Akrotiri Air base where we used their facilities to have a Junior rates Vs Senior rates football match. This had been organised for quite some time and was eagerly awaited by all concerned. Me, being a junior rate, was hoping for an easy victory over the old farts that adorn the senior rates mess!!! Well to cut a long story short, we won 8-2 and the game was enjoyed by all, there was only one unsavory moment when one of the JR's went through the back of one of the SR's. On completion we went back to the ship got changed and went out in Limmasol (I'm still not sure of the spelling). We had a great night and i ended up rather socially confused!! There were a few nasty incidents on the town but nothing too serious, people having wallets stolen and such! There was one lad who had strayed off the beaten track , and he earned himself a beating. He's OK, lucky, but OK. The following morning i was up at 0730 to go and play golf, eh, it's a hard life sometimes!!! There were 12 or 13 of us and i was so surprised that I'd actually managed to drag my hung over bum out of bed! We played at Secret Valley Golf club, and my word, it was awesome. The course itself was being re-seeded, so we had to T up on the fairways, which was a bit weird! But the Views, well, they were spectacular to say the least. We'd hired buggy's because 90% of us were still suffering and couldn't bear the walk. The course did have a few nasty looking hills. Well, my four ball consisted of Me, obviously, my boss WO2 "Ginge" Harvey, one of our tracker queens (that's an affectionate nickname for our targeting radar maintainers) PO Andy Beatie, and the ships Copper RPO (Regulating Petty Officer) Cozy Powell. I was driving our buggy, i was with Ginge. He's never getting in any kind of vehicle with me again!! I've always driven like i stole it! What can i say. We got back onto the ship at about 1900 and i was that tired I pretty much went strait to bed, as i was duty the next day. The duty is sitting in the ships control center monitoring alarms! really boring stuff, but someones got to do it. The duty lasts for 24 hours and in that time i cannot leave the ship, and i work 6 hours about with another lad or lass. The duty was uneventful and when the following day we sailed for the Suez canal. Yesterday we had some rapid rope training for the Royal Marine lads that had joined us when we left Souda Bay. This is where the guy's jump out of the Helicopter onto the flight deck/forecastle of another ship for boarding. All was going well, and then the OCRM (Officer Commanding Royal Marines) jumped from the helo and descended a little too quickly, landed funny and has been flown back to Akrotiri because he's in such a bad state, he'll live though and the injury is not life threatening. It does just go to show that this sort of thing can happen to anyone, not just jolly jack!! We're now preparing to go through the Suez canal and have closed down to action stations (our highest alert status) and then settled into what we call state 2, where all the ship, apart from the boarding party work 6 hours or 12 hours about, so half the ship is awake and able to man weapons in a very short space of time. Well, i think that's enough for now. I'll speak again soon. TTFN.

At Sea Again.

Well, blogger's, we're at sea again, if only for a couple of days. We've had two days in Souda Bay, Crete. And to be honest, it wasn't that great. The weather was like England in the autumn. We had a sports afternoon on the 29th and the ships teams had a bit of training and we also had a knock around five-a-side tournament between the messdecks. The girlie's have finally decided that they would like to do some sport so they've got themselves a netball team together. Their first match is against the R.A.F when we get to Limassol (not sure of the spelling), The lads have got a rugby and football team together but I'm not sure when they are playing. They did have a match whilst we were in Gibraltar, which i forgot to mention. They played HMS Edinburgh and won 4-3. With regard to the five-a-side, even i played in that!!! although i was only in goal. We won the plate final. Once all the sport had finished, we returned on board to get showered and changed and a few of us from my mess went into Chania. We had a meal in a restaurant on the marina, which I'd done a couple of years ago whilst i was here. It was a different restaurant, and the food was awful!!! I ended up paying 35 euro's for a starter, main course and about 3/4 of a bottle of wine, which, incidentally tasted like vinegar. We'd got sat down and ordered at about 1930/1945. The last bus left to get back to the ship at 2200, because leave expired at 2359, yes we do have a curfew in certain places. But i digress, we still hadn't received our main course at 2140! so we were starting to get a bit edgy. A couple of us were already socially confused and not appreciating the delay. To be honest, neither could we as the restaurant was empty apart from one other table of four, and ours, we had about 10-12 people at ours. Well, anyway, we managed to get back just in time to get the bus, but a couple of lads decided that they'd stay out and get a taxi back a little later. They were adrift of the 2359 curfew and will now not be allowed ashore in Limassol. Yesterday we had a normal working day, which, buy the way, is eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. We were granted leave, but weren't allowed off base!! A lot of people weren't very happy about this, but hey, never mind, get over it. I did, i went to bed quite early after watching the newest installment of Indiana Jones. Well, today, we've been doing some trials and things on our radars and things so that's kept us quite busy, and we continue our transit to Limassol. Speak to you all soon.

Souda Bay - Crete

Morning all. Well it's 0850 local time and we've just tied up alongside the NATO jetty in Souda Bay. We have a lot of work to do over the next few days. So i don't know when I'll be blogging again. We had another normal day yesterday, with one exception. We had a smoke alarm go off in the AVCAT pump space. AVCAT is AViation CATegory fuel. I'd literally just got out of the shower and was soaking wet when the alarm was raised. Now if you remember back to one of my first entries, i told you all that I am the support team leader, who gets dressed in full firefighting rig. Well, i had to sling my overalls on and head up the ladder, my bed is right above the AVCAT pump space, and aft to the FRPP (Fire Repair Party Post) to where all my gear is and get dressed. Luckily it was a spurious alarm and there was no danger. But I now needed another shower.......greeeeaat!!!! Well that's all for now, I'll be back soon. Take care.

Same stuff differant day!!

Hiya all. We've now been away nine days and to me it seems like a month already. We had another Mini-Gun and GPMG shoot yesterday. And myself and one of the lads that work for me, Tommo, went onto the upper deck to clean the Polorus's. These are basically compass's that are positioned in strategic places around the ship. There are two on the bridge wings. One on the port side and one on the starboard side. These are to aid the officer of the watch in his manouvering of the ship and also for the weapons crews stationed on the bridge wings to quickly locate their targets. We also have two polorus's on the GDP (Gunnery Direction Platform). Again these are on the outer extremities of the location where there is somebody closed up to locate the targets and pass it to the weapon director, who then broadcasts the fact over his intercom. We then didn't have a lot to do, however we did do some training with regard to weapon engineering. We worked on what we call TAG-OUT which is a safe system of work to allow you to work on a piece of equipment safely. Basically you isolate the equipment power supplies and then remove the fuses so someone cannot inadvertently turn the equipment on whilst you are working on it. You'd look pretty stupid doing the conga on your own!!! We also located the emergency power cut off switches, just so if you have to work on a live bit of kit, then your safety number, once he's finished laughing at your one man conga, can kill the power and carry out the appropriate action. Changing the subject from work, to play, those of you who know me will be surprised to learn that I actually went and did some fitness last night. Off my own back, with nobody hounding me to do so. I MUST BE ILL. As those who no me will also probably be aware i have a very dodgy knee, the remnants of a motorbike accident when i was seventeen. The fallout from that, I'm now not allowed to do any impact exercise. So my fitness will consist of walking, which I did last night for thirty minutes, and the cross trainer which we have secured in the winch well, a compartment down at the back end of the ship.

Sickening

Morning Blog fans, it's been a couple of days since i last blogged and i can't say it's been easy. I've been trying to get home to see my wife and daughter and in laws after the death of Fred. It's been a struggle on board trying to get the time off. Eventually they agreed, but said that I'd have to pay for my own flights!! Well, i looked into it and I'd only get five days at home anyway and that would be getting back very late on the Thursday and having to depart at 0630 from Luton airport. Not a problem really except that i live in Hull. I've discussed all this with my wife and we've decided that it's not practical. I'm really annoyed that i cannot afford to get back. I wish all the family the best and hope to see you all as soon as i can. To add to all these things that have been going on, I've had a constant headache since we sailed from Gib', i went to see the LMA (Leading Medical Assistant) and she advised me to lay off the Tea, well anyone who knows me, knows that there is more tea in my veins than anything else. I was devastated. So, i had to lay off the tea and drink plenty of water, she thought i was just de-hydrated. Well i did as i was told, but around 1900 i was sitting in the messdeck shivering my bits off. I don't get cold very easily. I went to see the Med' staff again and have been told I've got sinusitis or something like that! either way it hurts. And I've even had the odd blood clot to cough up!! great isn't it!! Speak to you all soon when i've got a little more drama for you!!!!!