Not a terribly inspiring day, as I spent the entire time trying (and failing) to get my blasted audit finished, so I will have to get back to the grindstone first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve also got to change all the combinations on my various safes, and raid one or two other departments to do security spot checks, so it could be quite a busy time over the next few days.
The ship held its full-power trials today, which meant that we wound up to just over 30 knots and held it there for an hour, then came to a dead stop in as short a distance as possible. Despite the speed, the vibrations, as I’ve noticed before, were a good deal less severe than on the old Invincible, and the stop was pretty impressive, as it took less than half a mile. We were aiming to stop within a mile, but half that distance was rather better than we had expected.
We also had AGR tests up on 2 deck today, but as I am now the proud(?) owner of a sort of beard, I was excused. I knew there had to be some advantages, quite apart from the saving of effort with a razor every day.
We had the full dress-rehearsal for the Sod’s Opera tonight, which meant that my earlier plans to play a Bridge contest had to go by the board. The whole thing was, predictably enough, a total shambles, with microphones breaking, lights not working, amplifiers packing up and so on, but no doubt all will be all right on the night, as Dennis Norden might say.