2 girls trying to kill me!

Death by sex? Sadly No!

The first is a lady called, Mandy. She is our circuit training instructor and my bi weekly visits to the gym in Peacehaven, has me aching and hobbling around for the remaining 5 days.

I don't think it can be natural to do that many sit ups in a lifetime, let alone in a 1 hour period. You will be pleased to know that I will not be sporting a 'six pack' there is no way that I could do one more elbow to knee, V , opposite elbow to knee, crunches, hands over knee and any other kind of sit up more than I do and my happy, slightly slack abdoman is probably going to stay that way.

The other woman, is my lovely spanish teacher who is trying her hardest to make my head explode. Death by present continuous verb endings. she does it so charmingly though.

I pay good money to both these people. Just think how much cash you could get off me for treating me gently..

Royal visits and note to self, read e-mails daily!

Whilst working on the lovely catamaran 'Mystique' on the Island of Cyprus. The slightly crazy crew played all sorts of games! One of their favorite games was with the international flavor of male chauvinism. In this vein, we chose the most beautiful woman that we met ( obviously taking her personality as the most important factor), from each country and after a small amount of nodding nudging and smiling (at each other not the said female) we would name her Queen of that counrtry.

Back to the royal visit! So it was with some surprise that I opened an e mail from the Queen of Romania! "I am coming to visit London next week"

How did "next week" become last week! so bloody quickly.... and was it really possible that I hadn't looked at my mail for a whole week. I was probably too busy entertaining 'Queen of France' ( sadly some games just stay with you!)

Claudya (Queen or Romania) sent this picture to remind me of why she gained 'Queen' status and I have made note to self.. Check e-mail more often.

He attempts to learn Spanish

While I was away, I did a little research into learning some spanish.. There is a school in Brighton that will teach me as much as they can in the time I am home. After a bit of negotiation on my 1st day home and an e mail or 2 was sent I have secured myself some one to one lessons every day!

Wow. I have completed 2 lessons and my head is spinning with new words. My flat has yellow sticky labels on everything with its spanish name written on it and things although a bit slow, are progressing.

a ladder for my apartment

it was time that a ladder was built for my flat. I gave it a lot of general thought and a jolly good looking at. It has remained this way for weeks.

Then over a beer a small drawing imerged. not accurate but a drawing and the other day on a crazy whim I went and ordered some wood for the job.

With skills handed from father to son I gave it another thoroughly good looking at, tinkered with some borrowed power tools and went for lunch with my friend Cliff.

My father was a craftsman and when I say handed down skills, they are pretty much what I worked out from watching him. That is however about 20 years ago because he sadly died 18 years ago. Needless to say my skills are lacking. More pondering.

shall I take a picture? good idea. Getting the hang of this now.. Cool like this. MY LADDER ta da!

The morning run in PICTURES!

This is my 1st attempt at sticking photos to my words. Maybe the two of you would prefer pictures instead of my ramblings..?

Anyway when I am home running is my pleasure and these pics are from my regular route. Its about 5 miles and beautiful.

He spilt stuff all over his going home trousers

Travelled home with Jack the lad O'Reily. He is about 70 and the ships volunteer carpenter. He decided to treat us to some in flight champagne but being a slight fella got a bit drunk.

Moral booster breaks down

Today a disaster! A British workforce love a cup of tea! At 10am we break for tea. We call it smokoe but its tea time and at 3pm we break for smokoe too and most of us might like a cup with breakfast and lunch aswell.

In the upper mess there is a little boiler that makes hot water available at all times. Simple. On the Lord Nelson it is known as the Moral booster. Today it broke down. The day just wasn´t quite the same. Of course there was tea but our little white box was dearly moissed by all. The engineers dropped everything in order to replace it in time for afternoon smokoe and we all made a soft sigh to see it back where it belongs.

I used To Like Tractors?

Another day passes and the bosun finds yet another small thing that makes him laugh. I have now sailed on many ships and they do all have lots of funny quirks. Some go with you as you move between ships and catch on with the new crew others are totally unique.

Today at tot time, I noticed that above the bar mounted into the deck head is a fan and on it there is a label. Now, all the fans have small labels, they have a date of the last inspection or cleaning and a number, so seeing a label is normal. This one reads "I used to like tractors"

Thinking this odd, I asked Marco the engineer to explain. A corus of permenant crew, said in perfect harmony.... "because is an EX TRACTOR FAN!" This is clearly a joke that everyone finds very funny how ever many times it is repeated..I like it too and I am sure that next time it is noticed I will be one of the corus.

Blokes called Duncan

I just don´t like them much...

The second Officer `Glory Hole?' and blokes called Duncan

I am writing again. I thought that I had decided to stop.. Today I found a new interesting place on the ship..
I had some maintenance reports completed and I went to the ships office, where I asked the Captain, "where do I put these reports?" She said, " Put them in the mates "Glory Hole!"

Well.... I left the office thinking as follows:

a) Is she too busy to be bothered with my menial filing question?
b) If I had a glory hole where the hell would that be....?
c) Is she suggesting I stick it up the mates arse?
d) Would you really refer to someones arse as a glory hole?
e) Should I just boldly go and ask Chris where his glory hole is?

So I thought... Im settling in quite well. I´ve been here a month or two now. I´ll just ask Chris.

"Chris? do you have something called a `Glory Hole´?
" Yes mate"
" Oh good. Is it a real place?"
Some laughing
"There is a hatch to a small space beneath the chart room"

"Lucky for you..! I was about to shove these reports up ya arse"

Tot time...

Being back in Gran Canaria is lovely. we all sort of feel at home here as it is our main base, the town of Las Palmas is near bye, there is a beach and of course Club Nautico..We are between trips and have a 4 day maintenance period before sailing again.

This sucks in some respects but unless we are NOB officer, ( night on Board) we can go and play. Tonight was a game of squash, a short swim and sauna and in a mo, a quiet beer in the square. I´m sorry for taking the good weather for graunted a bit. Oops! Sitting in a sqaure drinking cold beer and wearing tee shirts is in its self a winter treat that shouldn´t go un mentioned.

As we are in a maintenance period and mostly because we rely on a volunteer work force we have a `Tot time´. At the end of our working day, we are all entitled to a free drink from the ships bar.. A traditional toast is made and there is a standard toast for each day of the week. Today is monday and today we toast to `Absent friends and those at sea´ Tomoorow we toast `Our selves´ My favorite is Thursday, `The wind that blows, the ship that goes and a woman who loves a sailor´ I will bore you with the others at a later date.

I think so far, I only have 8 visits to my blog! So perhaps I should either, find something more interesting to write about or stop. Next leave will concentrate on adding photos. That might help.. Anyway, Love to all 8 of you. One of you might be my mum? One is probably Dai. I have 6 mystery blog reading friends! Or have dai and mum been here 4 times each? Bugger! I will tell you both all about it all when I get home, stop writing a load of Blogs and go straight to drinking cold beer in the square. Then I won´t have to give a passing care about my forgetfull attitude towards summer like weather in winter time . To my 6 other friends if you exist. I will write for a little longer. Some helpful comments and suggestions on input will be welcomed.
Me signing off for cold beers in the square now.

Back to Gran Canaria in time for the badgers?

Well, a happy new year to the one or two people who might read my meanderings. It has been a jolly festive season out here in the Canary Islands..

Christmas day was lovely on board and was spent alongside in the Island of La Palma. There was some trouble staying awake for the christmas day feast and general ship board carry on, as the mood had taken us on Chrismas eve and a few of us managed to dance the night away in the streets of Santa Cruz, until 730 am! managing to make it back to the ship, change into my uniform for a champagne breakfast.

New year was about the same but we were in Tenerife for that. More dancing in the streets till 5 am this time, lots of fun. The problem this time, was that we had to sail on the next morning, back to La Palma actually. What a merry go round! Can not really complain about the work, although not getting enough sleep. Night watches are normally beautifu and l star lit, I like it when everyone is in bed and there are just a few of us on the bridge drinking tea and staring at the stars..

Today we were up like proper sailors. Our captain, Claire wanted to get to Gran Canaria before the shops shut. The `rebajas´ are the January sales, pronounced rebaccas but commonly known to the crew as `Claires Badgers´. We had to get up at the crack of sparrows and make best speed between Tenerife and gran Canaria just for the silly sales. Made it here just after lunch. On the plus side, I bought some nice new shorts and managed a swim at the yacht club. Fab.