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.