S-Westerly

When my wife got a new car I had a whinge about the lack of a spare wheel whereupon she asked me where was the spare wheel for my bike.....Point.

I give stickers to my grandchildren. Drives their parents nuts when they have to peel them of the walls.

Crew of 21 including me. This is about average some have a few more some may have a couple less. Plus I have a cadet (trainee).

That's a good advert for the kit.

So they do, done it myself on a 10m boat. Bit difficult on one of these although a well known Danish company did operate with a crew of 13. However they did no maintenance at all purely operated it to get from A to B and eventually it ended in tears.

The large container ship who when a squall came through last night at 0200 (of course) failed to realise she was dragging her anchor and setting down on to me until my 2/O called him and told him. Cue panic and pandemonium. We were looking at having to slip our own anchor to keep away from him when he managed to get himself under control and bugger off. 350m might sound quite a lot but not when you are 360 m long. That's how close he was. Idiot. Hopefully the OOW on there got a severe bollocking.

This weekend we are in Abidjan where I'm due to change more than half the crew and officers. Company are moaning about the cost but are sucking it up anyway.

Congratulations to Fozzie and the new Mrs Fozzie. Been to said monument and it was thick fog and never saw a damned thing certainly not the rather splendid hotel behind you.

There's a lot of dead wood on here.

Not quite that bad as my bike isn't garaged and all my gear is in the kitchen by the back door. So in summer I can be out in 5 minutes. Winter 10 to 15.

Nooooo!. I give in.

Being vaguely nautical - shiver me timbers!

A brand new jacket should not look like that. That's shoddy workmanship and piss poor quality control letting it out the factory gate. No idea as to cost but I doubt it was that cheap.

The difference was the Japanese bikes were really good and the British bikes of the time weren't.

Now that's a rip off.