S-Westerly

When I returned to biking after many years away from it they were the most reasonable insurance I could get but I never made a claim. I believe if you do have to make a claim they are not very good. As always its a case of pays your money, takes your chance.

There are quite a lot of decent leather jackets around for bikes that don't look like power rangers. However most of them are on the pricey side.

Must weigh a ton?

Ditto nothing. It's tipping down with rain and mine lives outside so not good for owt.

That's a proper yorkie- none of these effete little round things!

I carry the toolkit that came with the bike, a puncture repair kit inc. 12V pump (Dynaplug), and maybe a small can of chain cleaner / lube if I'm away for any time. Otherwise it's Bennett's bike recovery. That said I don't think there's anywhere in Western Europe where you are 250 miles between places!

Some marine crankshafts are rather large but there's a shed load of smaller marine diesels around.

When we had a boat I was discussing Seagull outboards with someone and we came to the conclusion they were really good emergency anchors but effing useless as engines. Really liked my Honda outboard on the dinghy. Started first time every time.

I'd say he was a candidate for the Darwinian Awards.

Well in Weston super Mud you're lucky he didn't piss off on one of yours while you were working on his!

California has some of the best food on the planet especially if you avoid the obvious tourist traps. The scenery is to die for. I've done the Pacific coast highway 1 three times - fantastic. Further north towards Oregon and Washington State also great. I've skied Mammoth a few times but wouldn't go back as they've sanitized it a lot. Lake Tahoe ski resorts are really good with fantastic scenery to boot. I'd not want to live in the US although my brother does but I love it as a tourist.

And they say honesty pays.....

Rode to Cheltenham again for getting my ears de-waxed and the moulds made for the fancy hearing protectors. Now have to wait for them to arrive. Today was a good ride though as the weather was positively spring like. For an hour or two I could pretend lockdown was just an unpleasant dream.

One of these things you hope you'll never use but if you haven't got one you'll be buggered. Probably on a Sunday afternoon somewhere with no phone signal in the pissing rain.

I know you can install a Tesla home charger for a fee. But where's all the power going to come from?

Quite like thin pancakes but my favourites are the thick fluffy American style ones.

That's exactly what happens. Some do alright but many don't. Their society is utterly different to ours in that the young feel they MUST support the old or the wider family. Many of my guys send all their money home to pay for only their kids but their parents or cousins. That said many of them, especially the officers, who live outside Manila have big houses and often businesses as well (being run by family of course) and even the ones in manila will employ a maid or other menial. Indians are even more so.

Possibly but that may depend on your personal political persuasion.

I've noticed that among the younger generations there's a tendency to rent stuff rather than buy. Some of that maybe due to financial pressure especially housing but also with cars, bikes and other stuff. Whereas my wife and I bought cars outright all the younger ones in the family have some kind of pcp deal and change their cars much more often.

I believe you can insure the excess for a reasonable fee. Seem to remember seeing something about it on Bennett's website?

Remember that for a lot of third world seamen until things go badly wrong it's a very well paying job. In a decent company the average Filipino seaman earns more than a doctor back home. That said most of them use their hard earned money to educate the hell out of their children so they can get decent jobs elsewhere- US, UK, Europe, Australia being favourite. For those like me it was a great job until the internet and computers arrived. In my early days I worked for some real cowboy outfits but the money was great, the job was fun and the bullshit minimal. Since then its become shite as know nothing managers ashore try and micromanage every aspect of the job. As soon as I can afford to retire I'll be off.

FoC though has changed over the years. My current ship is Bermuda flag which is basically a UK FoC. The old bad boys of Liberia and Panama are pretty respectable. The current crop of chancers are often small island nations such as St. Kitts or Barbuda or places like Georgia or Mongolia. Its been like this forever though. In WW2 if your ship was torpedoed and sunk your pay stopped from that day. If you were rescued you got a survivors payment which was enough to kit you out to go back. If you died your family got sod all until the death was confirmed. Not even a telegram from the King. There's a reason merchant seamen are some of the most cynical bast*rds you can meet.

There is a global standard- the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) introduced with great fanfare a few years ago and like most things associated with shipping open to a great deal of skullduggery. This is because many operators on the fringes of shipping are one step away from good old fashioned pirates. You have dodgy registries whereby the flag of the vessel is powerless and has absolutely minimal standards. Think Mongolia for example, purely a legal fiction. Then you have coastal states such as the UAE which basically don't give a shit. As many contract workers there are effectively indentured bonds men for the duration of their work permits the UAE government doesn't give a toss for its legal obligations under the MLC and if a couple of dozen seamen wash up on their coast who cares? Finally the citizenship of the seamen involved comes into play. Some countries make quite a fuss over the mistreatment of their citizens,most don't, including sadly the UK for most of us. From the seamen point of view it also gets complicated. If the owner doesn't pay your wages the crew can exercise a lien on the vessel which basically means that if its forcibly sold even for scrap the proceeds must first pay out all the crews outstanding wages. However if the vessel is classed as a wreck that doesn't apply. (I maybe wrong on this as it's a few years since I studied maritime law and this kind of thing isn't my everyday work life!) Also if the crew leave or abandon the vessel they forfeit their rights to claim. There's loads more I could write but without going into technicalities that's a broad summary.

Why would they be? Democracy as we know it died in 2020. Whether we'll ever get it back remains to be seen. The attitude towards lockdown lifting would seem to indicate we won't and most people don't seem to care.

Well I suppose all those killjoys whinging about loud motorbikes will have to find something else to moan about.