A warning sign graphically describes what you will get if you get too close to the bars below.
Now the hole in the bars was just big enough to rest the camera lens, for a long range shot of Shere Kahn and friends, I didn’t see this divil coming out of stage right until I felt his whiskers rubbing against my right hand. I let out a low wail and jumped backwards about 4 metres much to the delight of the other visitors. I was shaking for about an hour after, good job he was just curious and not hungry.
I’m the one in the lovely orange suit, the deck cadet is in blue, he is the computer expert and it’d his fault I got into wordpress, however he was not the one complaining about the wireless internet. Anyway, we are rigging the gangway in anticipation of a visit from a couple of service engineers, and they do arrive by chopper and can be seen below. The engine started to act the bollix so we had to stop, and seeing as how the Baltic was frozen solid it was just a matter of turning the engine off and the ship parks itself. So two chaps from Rolls-Royce came to fix our problem, and they did it in no time and we up and running again. Of course Rolls-Royce make all sorts of stuff from jet engines to deck winches and luxury cars, but that division is small in the grand RR scheme of things.
I once sailed with an engineer who had worked as an apprentice with RR in Scotland, he was making a tool on the lathe and the metal was glowing white hot, when a tiny bit flew off and hit his overalls square in the groin area and burned through like a hot knife in butter, he told us that he felt a sudden extreme pain in his penis as the metal had burned all the way to the skin and left a pinhole scar at the top of the “helmet” area. He was going to show us the scar but we took his word, he was too eager to whip out the evidence so to speak for it to be a make belief story and who would make that kind of stuff up. His wife left him, and he needed consolation so he came to Cork and went on the hit and miss, I met him one night in a pub on the Coal Quay, Dennehy’s Pub to be precise, he went off to the jacks after a while and there was a fierce commotion, he had gone into the ladies, I immediately thought he wanted to show off the scar tissue, but the reason was more simple, Dennehy’s has the toilet names as gaeilge so he figures Fir was F for female and Mná was M for male, wrong. Innocent mistake for a Jock to make I suppose.
I don’t know how often the Irish flag gets to see blizzard conditions but today in Sweden it had to share air space with lots of the snowy stuff.
The locals gave a few odd glances at the strange flag flying, where normally a Swedish flag might fly, but there were no protests or demonstrations, in fact it was hard to believe it was St. Patricks day at all apart from my bottle of 12 year old Jameson, the pound of Dennys sausages and the ribbons sent over by the Ma. And the stereo was playing a few Irish tunes, or a few more than normal.
Another Irish person popular in Sweden is the bould Johnny Logan, there is an ad on the telly with Johnny and pals singing Molly Malone and other songs in a sort of a pub scene with pints of the black stuff….in fact you can click on the youtube link below. Is this on sale in Ireland? I don’t think so….cash in time, whats another year?
The Chief Officer from the Wilson Garston http://timstimes.net/2007/12/30/drunken-sailor/ that ran aground on Christmas Day received a prison sentence of 3 months for “grovsjöfylleri” as they say in Swedish. For being drunk in charge of a ship in other words. The 33 year old Russian officer was alone on the bridge at the time and was asleep due to the influence alcohol and medication. He had 0.89 per mg of alcohol in his blood, the law in Sweden states that 1,0 mg is “grovsjöfylleri” but in this case because he was asleep and the ship grounded he got that sentence.
Swedish links Sydsvenskan with photographs and here also Sydsvenskan which shows how the ship became a tourist attraction.
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