Froggies 2011 Adventure - Part 8

[pks1702]

Thanks for posting as others have said great photo's and words.

[oceanfroggie]

Great post. Interesting to see Le Cara (ex-HMS Swallow), I remember them being built. Mate of mine at the time said he had a contact in the drafting section and could get us a post on one of them. I thought there was no chance and put in to go elsewhere....turns out he was right and he got the post. Trip of a lifetime taking it out to Hong Kong followed by two years out there. Me? I went to a damp corner of the UK, where I met my wife!
Funny how life turns out :-)

Tell you a story about LE Ciara, some years ago I was doing a long solo passage around the Irish SW coast. It was a balmy hot hazey day, blue sky and sun. I'd been texting lat/long to my solicitor friend in his hot city office every hour or so, for fun he was plotting the fixes on his PC. I'd get the odd phone call "where was I now". He is boating mad and I felt a mild degree of sympathy for him couped up is his hot office during the heat wave, while I enjoyed the Atlantic mil pond on my hols.

About 15 minutes after I passed the Fastnet east bound but two hours since he got my last text report, I got a text from HIM telling me my exact lat/long, speed and heading. How the heck does he know that? I know everybody knows everything about everybody in Ireland, but this was weird. I hadn't past or seen any other vessels for hours. So I rang him "Stephen, how do you know exactly where I am?". He roared laughing, "you've been tracked and monitored by the navy". I thought he was talking though his human waste disposal facility!

It turns out the Commander of LE Ciara at that time was his God son, and he had mentioned to him that I'd be around that part of the coast. It was the big Cork week regatta and P42 was on patrol at the event, hundreds of yachts, no wind, angry sailors, but one lone "target" 25 miles down range making 18kts, which must have been me - it was. So Commander rang his Uncle/God father from the bridge of his war ship, gave my fix, and asked him to find out if it was me! Hence I got the text followed up by a phone call "Noel, P42 had been using you for target drills for past half hour". Is nowhere sacrosanct? There I am minding my own business off the rocky mountainous Atlantic coast of Ireland and I'm told about Stephens over heard phone conversation with the bridge "Sir, we have a firing solution, shell will take X seconds to target bearing yyy degrees, range Z meters, at W thousand meters range". It was only a drill but don't like our plastic tub referred to as a target by a ship with guns!

Four days later I encountered LE Ciara as she weighed anchor off Cork ready for patrol. Cheekily I MARPA'ed her on radar and sent a text to my solicitor friend giving her lat/long, speed and course. He forwarded the text on to his nephew, the commander on the bridge of his naval vessel. Hmmm, I thought, "touchee". BUT I got a message direct from the bridge, "I doesn't matter if you know where this ship is sonny, we can shoot, you can't" obviously in jest! I roared laughing as did his uncle when I told him about it.

Later that winter he arranged a tour of the ship for me and my son when she was moored in Dublin city. We got the full works below, anchor lockers, steering systems, engine room, bridge, mess, the whole works. They quite like the peacock class as they are the fastest ships in the naval service and she has the biggest gun, and can access all the remote bays and harbours on the west coast.

[mikef]

Excellent report, OF and superb photos

[oceanfroggie]

Thank you kind folk for the nice comments. Parts 1-7 coming up in due course, but part 9 hasn't even happened yet.

[AndieMac]

Parts 1-7 coming up in due course, but part 9 hasn't even happened yet.

Nice story about the warship Noel, I did wonder about the missing first 7 parts to the story though

[BrendanS]

The Bull Rock – I was so tempted to go through the hole in the boat, but as I was single handed, wiser council prevailed. <snip>
At the entrance to Dingle Harbour I was met by two Dolphin watch trip boats that tried to play “chicken” with me as they were astride Dingles most famous resident “Fungi the Dolphin”. I stood on and they reluctantly gave way.

Great write up, though I'd be more than tempted to go through, and you leave Fungi alone, I've swum with him from the shore early morning when no boats around

[oceanfroggie]

Great write up, though I'd be more than tempted to go through, and you leave Fungi alone, I've swum with him from the shore early morning when no boats around

That must have been wonderful. Fungi I suspect now has a few 'twins' as he must be quite old, but the Fungi brand is still huge down there.

See here: http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285025

I had company off Clear Island