The picture is taken off the coast of Norway, Utsira to be precise and we had a hell of a night that went on and on. Rolling and sliding, the picture captures the moment fairly well. I wasn’t sick in the vomiting sense, but by Jaysus I was tired. Some of the boys were looking a bit green around the gills after the longest of nights, each battling his own private battle in his cabin, trying to sleep, moving onto the daybed or lying on the deck wedged into a corner, meanwhile outside the sea was boiling and churning and the sky was full of snow.
It’s not a great time of year to be trading in the North Sea or indeed any latitude North of Gibraltar, better to be “Pope Gregory IX aboard his steamship The Saucy Sue currently wintering in Montego Bay with the English Cricket XI and the Balinese Goddess of Plenty”, oh hang on plagiarism from Black Adder goes Forth there.
2009 has been a fairly sparse blogging year for me, with posts coming few and far between. I’ve had a lot on my plate in real life so my contribution to the interweb has taken a second or third place. Despite that I continue to get visitors and comments so in 2010 I will be up and running hopefully with a few more posts and photos to keep you all entertained and informed. The job is serious and the sea can be unforgiving but the sailors are all people with lives and stories, I’ll try to continue to give you a bit of a taste of their story here.
Anyway thanks to all readers for all the comments and encouragement in 2009. Best wishes to you all for 2010.
Other activities including a short teaching stint at the local Maritime college and large doses of real life have kept me away from the old blog but I’m back on the high seas again battling the elements. The weather is on the agenda very much this time of year, low pressures rolling across the Atlantic inexorably creating havoc on land and sea. Read on for the gory details.
Just had a week of Southwesterly gales battering the ship, culminating in a violent rolling last evening that turned my tidy cabin into a bomb site. The loose paper started first to slide onto the deck, a bad sign. Then the creaking and groaning. Up to the bridge to have a look at the weather, 2 more hours before the next alteration to a more comfortable course, bang there goes something flying off the chart table, ding-a-ling, the bell starts ringing itself, …back and forth to the rhythmic sound of the Pilot Books rattling back and forth in their secured shelf, gadunk, gadunk and the coffee percolator delivering clunks of hot beverage to the bin beside it.
Meanwhile down below in my cabin the fridge has had enough of holding any contents and the door swings open 2 bottles of a green colour fly across the cabin and disintegrate upon meeting steel bulkhead, shards of glass mixed with a sticky sugary liquid mixing in with the paper already on the deck, coefficient of static friction substantially reduced and not helped by worn out Crocs on my feet I go sliding and skating across the deck until I reach a bit of carpet which steadies me up. Clearing up broken glass on a rolling ship is work for stunt men, and not one of them am I. Eventually and mercifully we change course and get the sea on the quarter, the clean up complete I make it into the bunk and sleep the sleep of the exhausted.
Roll on next port, as long as it doesn’t roll too much.
The sea is big and we are small, we got a fair beating in the North Sea the other day, the wind was cold and from the North and it whipped up the sea, and because we were heading west we got it on the beam. So there were a few green faces among the crew, the picture above shows the big sea and the small ship is what we are on. The decks were covered with seas and the howling wind was whistling through the ventilation system enough to make you wonder what the hell you are doing at sea and not at home eating chocolate Easter eggs.
But now it’s Sunday, and we are in the Irish Sea, the wind has died down and we’ll survive to fight another day.
HMS Gloucester
HMS Iron Duke
HMS Lancaster
Three warships passed our position today heading for sea all spick and span after the bad weather, there was no radio traffic and the AIS was switched off so no ideas about where they were going or what the mission was. Their silent passage was impressive with all the crew on deck and the white caps gleaming in the winter sun. A few days earlier there was plenty of chatter from one warship and the VTS at Southampton, now the other day at Rotterdam I blogged about being able to speak English on the VHF, well who better to give us a great example of perfect Queens English than the boys and girls of the Royal Navy?
Well it was English, but it must have been the competition for the most clipped and shortest time on air or they have some kind of military practice for short messages so they don’t get targeted by radio direction finders or something. There are things that are confusing when hearing such military tone and military speak ” This is coalition warship calling the vessel on a course of 225 speed 15knots in position etc. etc.” Since when have the Royal Navy started calling themselves “coalition warships”, and what happens when they use the half second grunts and bleats that are meant to be words but sound more like noises from a haggard or stall with the non-English speakers like the French? Probably more of the same back to them……
But I was happy to hear the calm and collected voice of Solent Coastguard on the VHF sounding very clear and concise, even if it was a bad weather forecast for more gales, they sounded good anyway.
Back in the shadow of a satellite again blogging can resume normal service. New ship and new voyages, joined in Tenerife as can be seen from the selection of photos in the side bar and now proceeding northward towards winter and getting used to Atlantic swell. Judging by the lack of e-mail my short absence wasn’t sorely missed, I suppose no blog posts equals no comments.
On my way to Tenerife I passed through Barcelona and ended up on a charter plane full of Spanish pensioners who were off to the sun, they completely ignored the call for seat row numbers to board, so I followed them and got a dirty look from the stewardess as if to say, what is the point, I had an excuse ready but didn’t need it. I got the usual stares and smiled back which is totally not what people expect, some look away embarrassed and some smile back, not as if I’m John Merrick or anything but it is interesting how quickly the stranger gets singled out. They all had their winter clothes on so it looked more like a ski holiday crowd than a sun holiday, I suppose it’s all relative, I had expected warm weather but for them it is winter.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife is just like any big city full of cars and taxis, and cheating taxi drivers waiting to prey on unsuspecting tourists and suspecting sailors, we knew we were getting ripped off by one driver, when we went ashore but he looked like he had friends in low places so we just got out early and paid the fare, the driver on the way back was honest so we didn’t feel too bad. The place was full of Christmas decorations which looked mad beside the palm trees, and the shops were thronged with shoppers. And legs of serrano ham!
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