Another busy day of exercises, and a good deal of both fixed and rotary wing flying taking place.
We also had a real live SAR (Search And Rescue) task, when Battleaxe picked up distress calls from a seven ton yacht which had lost its rudder in the quite heavy seas we have been in for most of the day. We launched a Sea King to assist in the search for the vessel, which was finally successfully located, by Battleaxe’s Lynx, in fact. We did not evacuate the crew, but assisted them to jury-rig a rudder of sufficient strength to enable them to continue their journey, which was the ideal solution to the problem from everyone’s point of view, as the last thing we need at the moment are more passengers, and we can hardly start towing broken yachts around the Atlantic.
On that note, there has been a lot of reorganisation on board in order to accommodate all the extra aircrew who have now joined us, and numerous officers previously occupying single cabins have had to make way for more senior personnel, and have ended up sleeping just about anywhere there is space to put a camp bed or a mattress. Fortunately, I’m too senior to be involved, which is a blessing.
We are now having a film every evening on the CCTV system. Tonight’s was ‘The Battle of Midway’, showing how America won the war for us, but I didn’t get to see it as I was fighting the real war in the Operations Room.
Possibly the best place to be, on reflection.