wonder if the bum boats are still around? maybe still flogging Cardboard shoes and suit cases.

Are you suggesting the wheelhouse is the place for hailing bum-boats to lay youths on the chart table for a bit of titillation? I don't think I would get any takers myself, even if (possibly especially if) I smelled like a dead Egyptian potentate.

Sailing orders are sailing orders however and if the ECDIS doesn't come up with a plan I'll ask you to send up a pretty one.

If we are just going to check out the bazaar for bargains 'on tick' I think you'll be disappointed. Ticks and the Sweetwater canal together spell Penicillin.

Mike Tyson famously said that everyone has a Plan until they get a punch in the mouth, so my friend you had better come up with a bloody good plan!
The Suez is not designed to accommodate persons of a weakly constitution and I know our crew will not flinch. Lets give it a go.

Ooooh! Are you going through Suez sideways like the Ever Given did? Beware pirates while doing pilates.

News travels fast in the Empire, youse'll know the price of a rack of lamb in London within a couple of months of it hitting the frying pan.
His Lordship is a savage for medium rare lamb chops so we'll have you scouring the hills and valleys of WAIRARAPA-BUSH for hefty, fatty ewes for our deep freezer.

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).