First trip to sea 1975

Fleetwood - Preston - London - Zagreb - Rijeka - Koper - Wild Fulmar - To sea Left Fleetwood at 03.00 after 2 hours sleep and eight hours packing! Both my parents came with me to Preston station and as the train pulled out I wondered how long it would be before I would see them again. As we pulled in at London Euston half an hour early I thought it was a stop further up the line, looked out of the door in curiosity and got a sudden shock. As I staggered out into the waiting a

Thursday 9th October 1975 We were introduced to the 3rd mate and various other crew members before hitting the sack, having been informed that one of us had to be up at 06.00 hours in working gear! Woken up by the sounds of the hatches being opened I got up and managed to locate the 3rd mate. I then found out that we were unloading bananas from Ecuador and spent the morning watching. The 3rd mate showed me how to measure the draught for and aft and then how to break a flag ou

Monday 13th October 1975   04.00 went on watch and was fascinated by lightening which was about 20 miles off and was lighting the clouds up and they seemed to glow like light bulbs with occasional forks of lightning streaking   about. I was allocated the job of reading the log every hour and reading the wet and dry thermometers at the end of each watch.   In the morning about 09.00 I helped the Bosun’s Mate inspect the lashings on the cars, several of which needed to be re-ti

Saturday 18th October 1975   No 4 to 8 this morning as we were having the weekend off before starting day work on Monday. I spent most of the day practicing splicing and doing correspondence work. At night there was a barbeque on the after deck with mountains of food. It was really first class but for a bit of wind. For the first time I had a conversation with the Captain who wanted to know how I was settling down and liking the ship etc. but also warned us of the dangers of

Sunday 16th November   In the morning we assisted the crew in getting the mooring ropes up on deck. We arrived off Port Said in the afternoon and I was on the bridge. Bitter Lakes - Suez Canal As we approached the anchorage it got dark. We had a lot of difficulty raising Harbour Control on the VHF due to distortion. Finally we anchored. I took several bearings, the Fairway Buoy, a lighthouse ashore and several channel buoys to ascertain out position. Later we were due to move

Saturday 1st November 1975   The morning Billy and I had to work out the average weight of a case of bananas for each hold. There had been some discrepancy over the weights and so a check was needed. We had the rest of the day off and I got busy writing numerous letters off to relatives and friends. By the time I had related the events of the past few weeks nine times I was glad of a film (That’ll be the Day) shown at night.   Sunday 2nd  November 1975   Woke up this morning,