After leaving my nightmare ship I did a year at HMS Sultan (the marine engineering mechanics training school in Gosport). I was working as "Buffers party". Basically I was in charge of getting the bonfire ready forthe 5th November, and if I say so myself , what a damn good job I did too.
A Year later it was back to sea, this time onboard HMS Andromeda, yet another Leander class frigate, this time though with a much better ships company. It wasn't long before we were back in action. We did a stint on patrol off the former Yugoslavia, stopping and searching suspected gun runners, and we also did a tour of duty in the Persian gulf.
I felt so much better knowing that the Andromeda was fitted with Seawolf missiles (proven to be very effective during the Falklands). I would have hated to do a gulf patrol on a ship with seacat as it's main air defence.
A good ship the Andromeda I spent a total of 6 years onboard her and have recently been to a couple of reunions, it was great to meet up with my old ship mates from 30 years ago
We did of course have the occasional party especially around Christmas time.
I think we were in Mombasa here on some R n R from doing a Gulf patrol.
Rob Pughe; Swabbing the decks, seemed to be a prefered pasttime in the Navy, 'nothing to do laddie', then get these decks swabbed.
When the weathers nice, you could also catch some rays
This is Spike Ainsworth dressed up like action man, what we were actually doing was 3"rocket loading drills.3" rockets (a.k.a.) chaff, were used in an attempt to lure incoming missiles off course.