A thing I forgot to mention yesterday was where we were. At 1800 we were abeam Cape St Vincent, still making our way slowly south, and by 0800 this morning we were abeam Gibraltar, and we stayed in that general area all day.
The RAF got in on the act, laying on a full air defence exercise involving Buccaneers, Jaguars (an aircraft so under-powered that it is popularly believed to only be able to get airborne because the Earth is curved) and EW (Electronic Warfare) Canberras of 360 Squadron. That all seemed to go well.
We saw our first land for some time today when we came to anchor a mile or so off Gibraltar, while the Sea Kings and the Lynx (from Battleaxe) bustled busily to and fro with all our bits and pieces. Quite a lot of stores which had been flown to the Rock and, more importantly, there was both a mail collection and a delivery today. In all, we embarked some three and a half tons of stores, which was the reason we anchored just off Gibraltar to minimise the transit distance for the helicopter VERTREP (Vertical Replenishment).
It was a beautiful day, hot and sunny, though rather hazy at times – the ship was recovering Harriers while dodging fog banks at one stage – and the Rock looked really cool and inviting. So near, yet so far. We anchored at about five, but by eight we were on our way again, and making more or less our best speed, as Battleaxe, Amazon and Brambleleaf had detached from us much earlier in the day, heading south, and we now have to catch them up, so it promises to be quite a noisy and vibratory evening, if you see what 1 mean.
There was a sort of horror-ish film on ITV this evening – ‘Halloween 2’ – a sort of ‘Son of Halloween’ which was itself a pretty average sort of effort I saw when up in Saxa Vord in 1980. I gave it a spin, but gave up after the first thirty minutes or so, as it really was very little different from the first one. Feeling immensely noble, I then ascended to my cabin to make a start on replying to some of the heap of letters that had arrived for me.