Been off the air for a while, busy at work and all….anyway still here, and heres a tale from a recent Master-Pilot briefing.
You get to chat with quite a few Pilots on these coastal hops, and you generally ask the same shite, ” Cup of coffee, Mr. Pilot? sugar, milk? or would you prefer Tea, soft drink, water?”
Yes Mr. Pilot she acts like a right handed prop, even though shes left handed variable pitch, and the bow thruster is 900 horse power, we can start to single up, engines are ready….and off you go again.
Some Pilots give all the instructions known to man, others ask if you are happy to manouvre the ship by yourself, I normally operate the controls anyway, and the pilot says what he feels is right.
You get to be a sort of Pilot story exchange, you tell each new Pilot the stories the last one was telling you. The Liverpool pilot said this and the Cork Pilot said that, anyway the Pembroke Pilot was telling me about an American family that had moved to Wales for a few years with a big corporation. We were talking about languages and Welsh, Irish and Swedish, anyway this American family had two young children going to school in the locality and the Welsh language is compulsory as a subject, so the young Americans were coming home speaking Welsh and the parents hadn’t a clue what they were saying. So the parents have taken up learning Welsh too. I can count to 5 in Welsh and can say one or two phrases thanks to having S4C and BBC Wales broadcast across the Irish Sea for years, the language is spoken by about 750,000 people world wide so these people are going to have a great secret weapon and a great laugh when they move back to the States, nobody will understand a word!
Cymru am byth!
“Vomit Point” and “The Vomit” are two interestingly named geographic points on the chart near St. Annes Head outside Milford Haven in Wales. They may have nothing whatsoever to do with getting sick, but I’m sure there are plenty of ferry passengers who might disagree after crossing the Irish sea being bounced around. The first question asked of visitors from England was “did you have a good crossing” meaning did you have to puke or not. Nowadays Ryanair transports more visitors to Ireland than the ferries, but the puking is still the same……
The name of the port here Milford Haven has been a cause for great amusement among some of the younger guys, they have changed the letters around a bit and abbreviated it to Milf. Heaven, pathetic really. Some people are easily amused, youth these days.
The sun rises on my last but one day for this trip. The city of Liverpool in the background.
The Liver birds on the Liver Building, 10 past 2 time to pack my bags. Leaving by Liverpool tomorrow. The question mark is Urban art, cost a fortune apparently. Its a bit of a sad location on the doors of the disused Cammel Laird shipyard, it almost asks will we ever build ships again?
You never know who is going to turn up in the strangest places, I met a guy today that I had not seen for 8 years, he was a trainee on one my ships, and he was not the best trainee, in fact he was crap, he bragged about losing his drivers license doing 80 in a 30 outside a school, we predicted his future was going to be on the dole que, or at the end of a bottle whixh was one of his favourite pastimes. But there he was large as life on the jetty wearing the surveyors outfit smiling and pleased to see me, I felt a twinge of guilt as I had been pretty tough on him as a trainee, sending him on hopeless missions for long waits and buckets of steam and he bit every time, hook line and sinker. He could have been a bastard today and reject the ship but he was just pleasant and cheerful, chatting about all the people on board when we sailed together, asking me to pass on his regards to mutual friends. Just goes to show you that you never know when the tables can be turned on you. Moral of the story for me is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, even to cocky 18 year old boy racers.
I had to give up thinking about the name of a band today and resort to Google, eventually I found it on a link from Wikipedia after searching for Welsh bands, anyway I couldn’t remember the name of Catatonia, I was trying to explain to the cadet about bands from Wales, we happen to be in Cardiff, I thought he would know a few, but he had never heard of Manic Street Preachers or Super Furry Animals or Stereophonics, I couldn’t believe it, he knew who Tom Jones was after I was forced to break out in song and give a few bars of “it’s not unusual” poor bastard got terribly red in the face much to the amusement of the AB who was doubled up with laughter. We decided that he would have to be educated so I have the task of making a compilation of Welsh, Irish and other parts of Western Europe that have contributed remotely to the world of music, contemporary or otherwise.
“If you tolerate this, then your children will be next” Manic Street Preachers
I couldn’t be too hard on him after all he is an engineer cadet doing deck practice and it is his first trip, and he is only 17, but he does ask questions nonstop I realise now that after years of believing fervently that I knew it all I do not have the answer to everything, this guy had Job pulling his hair out.
later folks.
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