Sick Blackberry

Oh dear, looks like my trusty Blackberry is getting sick. Seems the track ball won’t scroll left but fortunately our brilliant admin people in the office set up a great deal with Vodafone Spain.

We get a like for like replacement deal when or if there is a hardware issue that isn’t due to neglect or misuse. All I do is hand over IMEI number of the handset and they order a new unit which arrives in a few days.

Of course being a bit cheeky and allways pushing my luck, I asked our admin guy to push for the schnazzy newer 3G model with touch sensitive track ball. I like my 8310 but sometimes could do with the extra speed you get with 3G.

Just proves the old saying; “The more you have, the more you want” so I guess I should be grateful for the excellent service from Vodafone Spain. I’ll let you know if they send the schnazzy one though!

Casablanca

Well, here I am sat on my backside outside Mohammed IV Aeroport waiting for the shipping agent to send along their man to shuttle me to the ship.

He’s about two hours late, the flight was delayed, the aircraft a clapped out old ATR without functioning airconditioning and it’s August to boot. Now I’m here and I have time to collect my thoughts, and the fact it’s significantly cooler here than where I just flew from all-in-all things aren’t too shabby.

Last moth I had the most amaising trip to China via Hong Kong and I hope to gather my thoughts and blog about that little excursion. All being well I”m off to Norway in a few weeks time for some much needed Kongsberg training as well so can’t complain about the job that’s for sure.

Why am I here? This is not a rhetorical question by the way so no comments from the peanut gallery. I’m here to fit and program a Saab R4AIS and it’s a simple enough job to do….when I eventually get to the ship.

In the mean time I’ll just enjoy the cool air and the menagery of different sights and sounds that is Casablanca and Morocco.

Volcano

The ash cloud over Europe is not from a volcano, it’s British politicians burning the expenses forms before the next election!

David Rider

Occasionally in life you meet someone and they have an impact on you in a way that no one else ever has nor is ever likely too again. David Rider is one of these people.

I first met David and his wife Mary back in 2004. I was running a small yacht brokerage on a small marina and in walks this large chap all smiles and full of grandiose stories about super yachts, the rich and famous and far off glamorous locations like the Caribbean and Monaco. At the time I was thinking “yeah right buddy” but I let him spin the tales and bumble off down the quay side after saying good bye. About an hour later, in slips the biggest and brashest floating gin palace I’d ever seen and out jumps the Captain greeting him like an old lost friend.

After that, David would pop in about once a week, say hello, spread his by now ubiquitous grin about the office, spin yet another wildly unbelievable story, bumble off down the quay side again and another huge yacht would appear, usually bigger than the one before. After each visit you couldn’t help but think to yourself, “what the hell was all that about” and proceed to recover from the hurricane that had just invaded your world.

After a couple of years of occasionally bumping into one another, I received a phone call completely out of the blue. Turns out a couple of London investment people want to buy him and his partners super yacht support business out but he wants to retire and they won’t buy if he doesn’t get someone to take his place in Spain and Gibraltar, would I be interested he asks. After thinking about it for all of 5 seconds, I agreed to do it.

Now, for those that don’t know, the big yachting world can be very clicky if you know what I mean and stepping out of small sail boats into a world where the average yacht is worth in the region of 50 to 60 million bucks can be a tad daunting to say the least. Up until that point a large yacht to me was 60 feet (18 meters) and suddenly I find myself on yachts in excess of 150 feet (50 meters) long with a full time crew and more gold, marble and expensive timbers than the Vatican. Not to mention their owners who had pretty demanding expectations and tastes.

Well, David knew I would be in over my head so he stayed on after the sale of his company to show me the ropes and lend support when I needed it which was generally a few times a week and this is when I really got to know him. The stories were unbelievable.

At the age of 16, he had acquired what is now a very rare Italian car which had once raced in some famous race in Europe and was now worth millions and sitting in a museum. At the time it was just some fast car to mess about with and had no real value except to attract the girls with.

He spent time in the British Army, the Welsh Guards I think and got up to all sorts of mischief including chasing bandits for days and hundreds of miles across the deserts of Oman in an old WWII vintage half track relying on gerry cans for gasoline and water.

Actually, from memory he was sort of working directly for the Oman government after leaving the Guards but I never got to the bottom of that one. Knowing David though, he was definitely there for the adventure more than anything else. Many of his fellow soldiers would have been there along with a relaxed atmosphere, plenty of military hardware, bad guy’s to chase and an entire desert to do it in. Definitely a big adventure.

Fast forward a few years and David is still in Oman but working for his Dad installing electrical systems in hardened aircraft shelters. Somewhere along the. Line he ends up skippering dredgers, landing craft and various other commercial ships. Quite how one jumps from soldier of fortune, to electrical engineer and ships Captain is beyond anyones imagination. Not David’s, in fact it’s downright logical I’m sure.

The next step, he starts skippering private yachts and this was long before the term “super yacht” was coined. In those days, the only real luxury yachts out there were owned by the likes of Onasis, royalty, Greek tycoons and oil barrons with the odd rock star thrown in. They would summer in the Med and do Cannes, St Tropez, Monaco, Sardinia, Venice, and the Aegean archipelago. Winter was the Florida Keys and the Caribbean Islands. The yachts were smaller then and some were converted from military or commercial craft, there was no super yacht “industry” like you find today and you got a crew job because of who you knew and you could be trusted to do your job properly.

True to form, David has Captained for a lot really interesting people over the years, one can only imagine the names on the list it’s just that, well, I can’t remember any of them. To be honest, it’s probably bad form to name names anyway so I wouldn’t even if I could.

After so many years at sea and living out of a suitcase, David came ashore and proceeded to start his yacht support business. Oh, I almost forgot, in between all of the above, he undertook various building projects and even set up a nursery business in Wales and was one of the first to supply supermarkets in the UK with plants and flowers.

Indeed David has done a heck of a lot, can tell a story or two and loves an adventure.

At least he used to because last December, just a few days before Christmas, David passed away suddenly from a heart attack. He was in his late 60′s.

His last adventure was to set up shop in a shipyard in Algeciras and was working closely with the yard owner to attract his beloved super yachts into the region. Knowing David it would have been a cracking business in spite of the recession. I had been setting up alongside him selling my marine electronics services. With David no longer there, I really have no desire to continue in the yard and now work for someone rather than myself.

The other day coming ashore, I spotted one of his yachts leaving Gibraltar and I thought of him. At that moment I began thinking in terms of before and after David. Before I would have spotted the yacht, thought of David and known he was nearby, more than likely spinning a story, met up with him and have a chat and a laugh. Now, I spot the yacht and it reminds me he is no longer around and the story’s have stopped. It’s taken me 4 months to get my head around that fact.

This is going to sound cliché but he was genuinely one of these people where nothing was too much trouble, never got angry, was a true gentleman and loved an adventure. The world is a little less interesting with his passing.

David had many friends, close friends and a large family. They all knew him for many years and will know him far better than I ever did. His funeral was a right cast of characters as you can imagine with friends and aquaintances coming from all walks of life. I met his brothers and sister as well as his parents. Yes, you read correctly, his parents. It was great to speak with them albeit in terrible circumstances. Yet more adventures involving David came out of the wood work at the wake but I’ll never be able to recall them in a million years. I learned a lot more about him that day and could tell he is and will be deeply missed by everyone who ever knew him. Mary says of David that he was larger than life and with that there is no argument.

As for those tall stories he used to spin? Astoundingly, every single one is absolutely true.

Blackberry First

Well, I’ve been so ridiculously busy that I haven’t had too much time to blog and the site is getting a bit stale so time for drastic action..

As much as I blat out a twitter or two, the blog enables me to go into details on all manner of nonsense I’m likely to talk about.

Speaking of Twitter, I am now using UberTwitter and this combined with a Blackberry that features a camera and GPS functionality means I can tweet with coordinates included and photo’s so I guess the next phase is to do the same with the WordPress app on this phone.

At present I’m sat offshore following a days bunkering so this should be a good test.

The one downside I can see is that I have upgraded the Blackberry software which has added video functionality but the device is only 2.5G enabled so uploading a small video at 56k is just not possible when I’m stealing a few minutes here and there to tweet, blog, photo and video.

Maybe if I sweet talk the boss into upgrading my phone to 3G then I can use it as a modem to access our work ftp server rather than having to splash out on a USB 3G modem thus appearing to be benefitting the companies interests. It has to be worth a try.

As far a Uber Twitter goes, it is about the best tweet app I’ve seen because adding photo’s, video,s and your location is just so seamless that anyone can do it. It even automatically created a Tweet Photo account for me the first time I uploaded something. I can not recommend it enough and it appears to be better than RIM’s own recently released Twitter app.

So that’s it. If you’re reading this then the WordPress app works which will hopefully inspire to start blogging again with greater regularity.

Bunker operations underway whilst we repair navigation systems

Changes

I’ll keep this short and sweet because there’s not a heck of a lot to say. It’s been absolutely ages since I posted anything and the reason being I tend to do most of my writing on the fly and during “between moments” so I have been looking around for various widgets which will allow me to do. I get most of my ideas on the launch to and from ships, in the car waiting for a vessel to come alongside and in the quiet moments when I’m not pre-occupied with fault finding something. This means I need to use my Backberry but not always for a Tweet as my thoughts tend to involve more than just 140 characters.

Whilst I have been looking about I noticed that WordPress have lots and lots of goodies that bolt on easily and will meet my needs. Not that there is anything wrong with Blogger but it seems to me that WordPress just has more goodies.

With that in mind, I’ll spend the next while sorting out wordpress and update the blog once I have migrated posts accross. In the mean time I’ll keep “Tweeting”.

Thanks for reading.

Cool Cats

Whilst hanging about at Cammell Lairds ship yard in Gibraltar for one of the Normand twins to come in from a Dynamic Positioning test so I could install a PBX, the guy’s on the quay side were getting ready to receive a fast ferry into the dry dock for maintenance.

I grabbed the Blackberry and snapped off a few shots so sorry about the quality of the photos.

These vessels operated by Acciona are a regular feature in the Bay and Straits and everyone knows full well to keep an eye out for them because of their speed. Most small yachts cruise at 10 knots and ships cruise at 18 knots but these behemoths carve up the ocean at 40+ knots which means from the time you spot them on watch or AIS/Radar until they pass by can be on top of you in less than a few minutes leaving a huge wake in, well, their wake!

300 feet long and travelling 40 miles per hour is an object not to be taken lightly. Look at the stats.

Total length: 97,20 m.
Breadth: 26,60 m.
Depth: 7,70 m.
Standard displacement: 1.050 tm.
Maximum displacement: 1.650 a 1.792 tm.
Engine power: 39.200 C.V.
Speed: from 38 to 47 knots

Capacity: 880 Passengers
260 Vehicles

What was so amazing was the absolute control the Captain had over the vessel as he negotiated the vessel into the dry dock without any rope handlers or linesmen with just a foot or two of clearance on both sides.

The vessels are manufactured in Australia by Incat and their all aluminum wave piercing design is what gives them such speed and the water jet propulsion system does not require rudders nor reverse gear, just a fully articulated propulsion unit coupled to a reversing bucket that directs water in the right direction.

The wake left behind as they enter the Bay is spectacular. On one occasion I was transferring from a ship to a 45 foot long 4 ton launch and was very nearly thrown into the water when the launch was tossed about like a twig as the wake slammed into the ship’s hull and bounced back at the launch.

As Mr. Bond would say, “shaken but not stirred”, but it was close.

Journey times are less than half of normal ships and during the summer months, millions of passengers travel between Algeciras in Spain to Tangiers in Morocco or Ceuta which is a small territory in North Africa belonging to Spain.

Each time I spot one whilst onboard another ship, I always fire up the AIS and clock their speed, it never fails to impress me. If you get the chance, buy yourself a ticket and take a ride, it’s well worth it if for no other reason than to marvel at how smooth the ride is and how quickly you get to your destination.