With ES on the bridge it will be either full ahead or full astern, both with the object of ramming and sinking anyone close by or in our way.

really!...but I heard he was time served on the IOW ferry. Ah, errrr, yes i see what you mean. Going to be a lot of fun with ES in charge. I like his style ha ha

Quote, "Going to be a lot of fun with ES in charge", Unquote.
My arse.

Some are labouring under a misapprehension that I am Master and Commander of this fast and commodious vessel. I am not. I am a simple Second Engineer with a Chiefs Certificate of Competency and that is it.
Down the Pit with TkMax and the two buckos thats my lot.

Well dont look at me guys. I am only the owner along for the ride,

Tell all your old shipmates we have vacancy's for Skipper, Mates, bosun, chippy and catering crew.
Ability to distinguish between Port and Starboard a great advantage.

our radio officer (sir Varley) can tell the difference between Port and tawney.

Lord Varley has a "Man" who sniffs his Tawney when required and shops for Cracker Barrel in supermarkets when overseas.
Rank hath its privileges.

Victuallers, licensed or otherwise deliver. Cheese out of bond is one expense I can manage but the Tawny needs the duty free route.

I have given one of the pretty ones a sit-up and beg bicycle for collecting the groceries, you didn't expect me to do servant's work, shirley.

(And if ewe call me fatty again, pig-iron-poker, you'll be learning just how much easier it is to drink your evening bucket of Chateau Bothiebathtub with no teeth.

(We do a pretty good block 'Vintage cheddar' ourselves - in my view our only good cheese but it is that thing).

Indeed, as I recall the Supermarket in Playa Blanca stocked a decent range of IOM Dairies cheese, and found it to be good quality. Certainly not mousetrap. One supposes that diversification is needed now that Funny Money is very mobile.

At one Manx food and drink expo (now discontinued) I chatted to the Creamery manager. In agreeing with me about the favourite (not quite without traid-trickery) he commented that whilst he would like to make only that he couldn't turn down an order for 40 tons of Lancashire look-alike if it came his way. (It may have been only 20 tons but it still made me think VLCC as in Cheese Cart). I prefer the Whey butter as having more flavour than the Creamery mark, unfortunately it reflects any dyes used in the batch of cheese from which it came.

Whey butter?
Never heard of it, and fairly happy to eat Irish creamery butter. Cholesterol 3.8. Thanks to me choosing my parents carefully.

Has this guy Tweedy turned up yet? Get YM to give him the joining brief, It is believed they speak the same lingo.

'Whey butter' is butter made from the cream separated from the whey used in cheesemaking. Not the cry of those happily and unexpectedly deprived of margarine, that would be 'Whey! Butter!' or possibly 'Whee! Butter' but I'd check on the spelling and punctuation before I tried any of that.

Don't know where the worsted-wearing kiwi has got to. I'll ask the chandler when he gets alongside with the tawny tanker. Lucky he's not from your woodneck E-S, Sir W might have been accused of a certain lack of clarity with his "two shovels and 'take your pick'" style of vacancy advertising.

Do the Recreational Navy still do the press-gang thing? Maybe he's taken the King's 5p.

Little Miss Muffet only had to deal with curds and whey, and now cheese makes an entrance.
Are there many Tuffets around Douglas? and have they a twee tweed cover, I do hope so.

Ah, Fine Gentlemen, it is I, Doug of the Inland Antipodes. I was dealt a low blow, chest infection, ampicillin and prednisone required with much horizontal auditioning for death being performed. My wife didn't believe my pathetic acting, so I didn't get the part. Then, all of a sudden, after nine months, we had a 7th great grand-child turn up. Another fine young part Maori lad, who will no doubt aspire to be an all black one day, but, will probably follow his Dad into the sheep shearing business. Maybe. We'll see. We may not even have sheep when he starts work.
So, the GD is still afloat? Nobody drank the alcohol out of the compass yet? If you are heading south, you may be kind enough to bring some summer with you, sunbeams in a jar, a bottle of something warm perhaps. Winter here is a bit cold, wet foggy, depressing, hence the annual chest problems - and it's not even a sea chest! My Dad, the real seafaring hero of my life would have been 91 yesterday, if medical misadventure hadn't ended him when he was 82, so, my thoughts have been with him too. Whenever he got sick he'd say mad stuff like, "The giggling gear has fallen off my laughing shaft and dropped all the tappet clearance in the sump." Then he'd eat raw garlic washed away with Glenfiddich and be fine a few days later. Marvellous constitutions you senior mariners have. Here's hoping your fine ship has a safe trip and that your crew is replenished soon. I'm not sure I'd be any good ... I was a telephone tech, then a datacomm engineer, and I think the eminently capable Varley has all that well in hand. All Hands on Deck! The ship's going up a hill!

Davie Tweed played rugger for Ballymena, Ulster and Ireland but was not quite a gentleman off the field, I do hope you're not related.
Your recent post #9092, whilst informative requires me, with O-Level English, to comment:-

1. It's too long. Shipmates are addled with drink and can only handle short, pithy comment.
2. GD2 has huge quantities of Vick and Vegimite and alone or in combination will cure all ills.
3. I sailed with twin British Polar engines and surely met your Dad as the beasts regularly had the giggling gear fall off the laughing shaft and dropped all the tappet clearance in the sump. Polar's UK "Makers Man" had an open return ticket to come and retrieve our tappets.
4. Let me be the best judge of the the eminently capable Varley. We must delete all reference to capability as its not woke enough.
5. Enough.

There is now no longer any Vegemite aboard as some fool mistook its tank for Bunker C and into the fire and up the funnel it went. No wonder the BP is down to 50 psi. Perhaps a work experience Junior Diesel Engineer?

Fear not, however, for there will be 100 x 44 gallon drums alongside when we next reach port. Pity that no-one seems to know 'whither we are bound'. Just hope that it is warmer than here.

Is there now 'Free Trade' between the UK and Oz as I was appalled to see Marmite on the shelf at Woolies the other day beside the Vegemite. Perhaps it has been dumped/smuggled in from the North or South Island to us here in the West Island.

The Melbourne City Council is trying to have the smell from the Vegemite Factory heritage listed (along with dredging the Yarra to provide additional headroom under the Spencer Street Bridge) .................

Oh well, at least it's not my month for a haircut tomorrow but I still have to drive.

I don't know about it disappearing into the HFO. Drew's Junior Boys Own Chemistry Set suggests that that scum in the gauge glass is maybe it. Better test the heating coils, they were designed for Marmite so maybe we have some antipodean electrocondimentary corrosion going on (so might as well check them impressive catholic adenoids whilst you're down there).

You mustn't feed the gyro with alcohol. I have only just got the damned thing to interface with the ECDIS again. Loosing the footer cheered-up the Anschutz remarkably but getting it tight again is only asking for another quarrel.

So sorry the young fella does not have all his parts. Suggest the sheep will take that as something of a disability. Have a nephew who has retained his chapati making part very well but unfortunately not the work-ethic part that is usual amongst those from the subcontinent.

I can well do without that heritage idea. Now we have city status I suppose some wideawoke will try and 'list' the scent from the Colonel Balti McMuckburger complex that now stretches from the fire station to the Pulrose Bridge (I imagine a little smaller than that spanning Mr. Spencer's Street but no less important for the denizens of that place in want of a post-midnight McBucket of spicy chicken-thighburger wraps).

ES - The only Tweed I'm related to is the river, having been born on the north banks of it, at Castle Hills Maternity Hospital in Berwick. And yes, I live in what was the the Wairarapa Bush, but the bush has largely gone, replaced by NZ's green desert look for sheep to fatten themselves upon. They still chant Push-Push-Push with Wararapa Bush at rugby games round here.
British Polar makers men - Bill Biondi or Jimmy Carruthers - they used to come and visit Dad, Doug Allen Snr., in Aberdeen. Dad didn't go south much. He always seemed to be off to the western isles, Orkney, Shetland, Scrabster, and Iceland once (being the north of Scotland service guy). Middle of the night, he'd drive away with a piston or a connecting rod in the back of the Polar/Widdup Austin A40 Van, through snow and ice to get some poor boat back to sea and fishing again.
You're right, it's too long. But happy memories. I recall Bill Biondi teching me how to use a circular slide rule when I was about 9. Great times.

Pity he didn't teach me to spell teaching ...

I hope you seamen never had to face this sort of stuff ...
https://gcaptain.com/watch-houthi-dr...eid=8c0c391b38
... and are you sure the GD is capable of withstanding such attacks? Or do you have some marksmen on the crew?

The Royal Yacht eh?

https://www.heraldscotland.com/resou...ds-article-962

Maybe the GD should contract to CalMac?

Churlish of me not to add that I hope TweelKiwi is properly out of the hospital suite after his attack of double barrelled antipodean lurgy.

I don't know if Sir W has a contract with an armed security concern but the Sat has both LRIT and SSAS built in. Not that the drill went that well. Button pressed, 10 minutes later a Plastico with tray of G&T turned up on the bridge. Perhaps I'd better get the boy to check that the button is wired-up correctly.

As for marksmen. We have a coupe of marked men on the staff. Is that the same?

(Pa, trying to enthuse the boy by showing me how to make a 'slide rule' with two sheets of log-log graph paper. Didn't stick).

I think I may have found an old Russian thing which fits the bill, they didn’t need it any more because someone keeps sinking their ships.
It’s referred to as CIWS and it’s going cheap, although I think it goes bang rather than cheep.

That sounds like us asking for trouble. What is needed is for everyone else to employ FASRWs.
(Far-Away-Short-Range Weapons).

In the cinema, when ordnance is about to go bang, it starts ticking. If that CISWS comes with Vlad the Insaner's logo on it please don't bring it onboard until it's stopped going cheep.

On the other hand - maybe the reason they keep 'loosing' stuff is because it's not very effective at stopping incoming.
Better scrub that idea.
But I'll keep looking.

CIWS lacks punch in the torpedo department. It fires deflated uranium which TKmax tells me floats. We used dump the gash buckets down upon them but MARPOL has buggered that up also. Little use dumping a bucket of clean cardboard and newspaper on a RIB full of deranged desperados.

Huh, I wouldn't take my lungs into a hospital here. I'd be bound to get covid, again. Thank you for your commiserations though. I suppose I should request the stewards to deliver you a firkin of Tawny Port, if indeed, that is how Tawny is deployed? I can't do port or I get gout. Family failing.
I managed to interweb the LRIT abbreviation, but SSAS brought up a nightmare of spreadsheet stuff. In your nautical terms it's ... Stand Still and Steam? Stop Steering and Sink? Soap Strop and Shave? So much to learn. Were you a Marconi man? I'm a macaroni man myself.
Marked men will be just fine as they have the knack of self preservation built in.
Better splice the mainbrace I suppose.

I think the best way forward on the SSAS is to park it for the time being, we have a lot to learn about tying knots and hitches, rig a Pilot Ladder safely, grease and maintain roller fairleads and quite important memorise the duties of the Peggy.
As a DHU your next step up the greasy pole is EDH which you wont reach if you spend time drinking with the ner-do-wells.

WRT Inmarsat C (other brands are available but they aren't as good) - Ship Security Alert System. WRT Tawny port (deployment by firkin acceptable, but by firkin barge preferred). Sip Slowly After Supper.

We have gout in the family too but try as I might I am unable to develop it with Port. Perhaps you should try Tesco's own brand (do you have Tesco's down there?) or Rochas if there are ladies at table.

Indeed I started out a Macaroni man in 1971 and stayed with them until they ran out of the proper job and I left the well-lit uplands to descended to the depths of the pit full time. I must have been too much bother at that because after three trips I found myself behind a desk in 1981 with my former shipmates calling me rsole. Another 30 years saw me to retirement and a honorific 'Mr' to put before Rsole.

OK ES, I have my New Boatmans Manual here and the Ashley Book of Knots and I'm ready to learn. I think I'll be fine until the GD starts rolling, as I get seasick sitting on a dewy lawn. The Peggy? Is that a ship's husband? I recall Dad relating tales about getting his 'dhobi' done by such a person, who used a steam hose and metal bucket to clean his overalls. That trick worked right up to his first Bri-Nylon shirt, which came back as a grey lump with buttons stuck in it. DHU is a Gaelic word for bum and I hope we're not getting involved in unsavoury sailor habits? I must pack a pot of starters just in case.
Ah yes Mr. Varley, I know about Inmarsat phones as I had to purchase them out of my budget for the 2nd Signals Squadron, but sadly, they never let me play with one. The troops used them in East Timor, Bougainville etc. No Tesco's here, we have Woolworths, New World and Pak'n'Save supermarkets and I believe Costco from the West Island are trying to move into the market here. YM may know more about them? Btw, I looked up his Spencer St Bridge and it's bigger than the Pulcrose Bridge - even has trams over the Yarra.
Right, I have ropes to learn, fairleads to grease, Peggy to learn and ne'er do wells to learn drinking from. Busy place here isn't it?

As a landlubber, I am in a bit of a knot trying to work out some of the 'nautical?' acronyms in recent posts. I don't know much about Costco either other than that unless you want a thousand toilet rolls in one purchase they don't want to know you.

I don't know if they even sell Vegemite (or Marmite if you insist) but I have seen Vegemite in gallon tins in a 'supermarket' at Quorn in the Flinders Ranges north of Port Augusta. Fabulous place even had one of those overhead wire thingys to a single cash desk. All years ago of course.

I don't know why dredging the Yarra didn't increase the headroom under the bridge either. Perhaps I will stand for lord mayor and a councillor will explain it to me? (the lack of capitals for mayor and councillors is a subtle hint as to my respect for them and their ilk - but you lot will already be aware of that.

YM
DADFA (Deputy Assistant Director of F... All)

Peggy - meaning man with peg leg.
In days of sail if a seaman lost a leg he could no longer work aloft and often served as a messman.
Nowadays he would be fitted with a specially designed prosthetic limb to enable him to ascend into the rigging following months of special training of course.
But the messman or ‘mess steward’ is still called a Peggy.

Now, talking of knots.

An old master on his final trip calls at a dockside pub much frequented in his more junior days. After being astonished at the price of a pint he idly wonders if the young ladies still plied their trade in the accommodations 'above'. They did and although astonished again at the tariff he decides that as it's his last call he will sample the goods.

Well aware he was no longer the golden youth that the girls had vied for but still proud (if not vain) he asked the dug-out old maid, who had drawn his short straw, "How he was doing".

"Well", says the old trooper. "You're doing three knots, Captain".

"Three knots, how d'yer work that out?"

"Easy" says she "You're not hard, not in and you're not getting your money back!"

Dredging.

We need a belly-button draughtsman to confirm but I think the reason dredging doesn't work is that deepening the depth under keel will reduce tendency to squat.

If one were tramping (full-away plus) under the Yarra Bridge with just enough Yarra underneath to remain seaborne then squat would result in more airdraught. Of course there is a good chance that one pushes sufficient Yarra water out of the way to allow her to tear herself open on Yarra bed which is not as buoyant as Yarra water (assuming antipodean water to be as floationally similar to Douglas river water) or as forgiving in terms of what it does to formerly double bottoms when encountering them at speed.

Dredging will result in conditions less conducive to squat and so reducing airdraught. In this case raising the bridge might be a better option to avoid conjoining of the two bridge decks. Meanwhile, take a pilot.

I should say the squat here is not related to the toilet paper procurement conundrum of earlier in the thread. Not, that is, unless the arithmetic lacks the necessary precision required to employ squat to avoid either of the two immediately unfavourable outcomes of such a plan.

YM, fellow landlubber, surely your Yarra River is a tidal estuarine variable level piece of liquid. Dredging wouldn't change the air-space headroom by much, but you could use the spoil from the riverbed to increase the height of your stop banks? Those catering packs of Vegemite could be used to raise the Spencer St Bridge so that passing shipping needn't alter the meta-centric height of their vessel or reduce the volumetric efficiency of the funnel by flattening in passing. Varley can do his arithmetic for those calculations, on his graph-paper slide rule, whilst drafting new bellybuttons for the entire crew.

Malcolm, I wooden have thought of that! I recall my grandfather singing an old Burl Ives song about Looking Through the Knot-hole in Grandpas Wooden leg. I must have used the peg memory system to save that in my head. Today, they would make an AI driven robotic limb to do the rat-line climbing, top-sail work, setting the jiboom spanker and suchlike, without using the rest of the sailor. He can stay on deck making medicinal smokes for the crew - I believe it's called roller reefing?

Isn't it strange that we mention mayors and councillors and squat, all in the same post here.

Roller reefing? Hey man, I never spotted that euphemism before. Must bear it in mind for future reference.

Between BillH speaking in a dead language and you quoting from Ashley's book of horrors I'm in danger of developing a migraine.
The Deck Bose will show you 12 knots and 3 splices....... All you need to know. Practise day and night. You will go on Bridge Watches and learn the duties of the Lookout, the Helmsman and the Farmer, you can leave the Metacentric Height in the safe hands of Harry Tate and I will assist if required.

Keep well away from the drunken crowd especially in port, don't forget His Lordship was once a young, enthusiastic first tripper and look at him now, sozzeled on cheap port wine.

Many ships plying their trade in rivers have cleverly collapsible masts, bridges (nautical), aerials, stanchions etc. (collectively: 'clobber'). This is so they can avoid the arithmetic surrounding the necromancer's approach to squat (nautical) but still allows them to approach bridges (geologically affixed) without resulting in squat (trouser browning avoidance). Providing they remember to use the features in time, of course.

The problem with GD is that the funnel suite, forward cocktail lounge and swimming pool are structural. Much else can be removed and stored below during canal passages but removing the cat's basket (clement weather only) and the owner's two story bathing machine doesn't make-up for the bits we can't. Nor am sure we can disassemble the full scale working model trebuchet TMac and E-S bought last time they went on a bender up the road.

Many other bits do fall off the old girl but Class make us stick them back on again, and at some considerable cost to Sir W, too.

(I am too well oiled to go cheep, but I do drip a bit these days).

So, correct me if I'm right, but doesn't squatting your ship too much cause an unsightly tumblehome?
I would have thought that the GD was designed such that the cocktail bar could be rotated to disappear into its back wall and that the swimming pool and bathing machine could collapse into the bottom drawer of Sir W's bunk. The water of course could be efficiently be converted to steam and released back into the atmosphere until we need it later. It won't cost too much to the owner but someone might take damage from the ships cat whilst bed moving, and that may be a trouser browning occasion all of it's own. I've know some wild pussy in my time and they don't agree with disappearing bedding. We cold take advice from such piscatorial trapping members, like rustytrawler, and tow a net behind to catch the pieces that fall orf? We might even get fry of fish caught in the cod-end! I'll bring contact adhesive to stick it back together and fresh (non-brown) trousers.

Happy International Day of Friendship to you all.

Rustytrawler has not got time to set up a net for you as my net is in use by the French goverment catching turds in that mucky river seine, dirty bastards, dont they know that they are putting the frogs in danger.

Seine is so dirty it must be managed by Thames Water.

Media here in Oz is saying that some medical professionals are advising swimmers to drink a can of Coca Cola after swimming in the Seine 'to kill any dog germs'!

Haven't been to Paris for years but main memories are of a beautiful city, rude locals and dog droppings in the streets which, presumably, end up in the Seine. :cloud: