After leaving Kyle of lochalsh I was drafted to HMS Apollo. The Apollo was Portland squadron, which meant that we spent nearly all our time at Portland doing PWO (Principal warfare officer) training. This involved doing a Thursday war every week, the Thursday war was always good fun (not). We would sail from Portland at action stations at 0630, during the next 5 hours we would get attacked by everything the Portland staff could throw at us, Aircraft, submarines,ships and we would do our best to survive.
The Apollo was the first Leander class frigate I was to serve on, she was a bit more modern than the Berwick or Lowestoft. Not that she was that much different though. The basic layout was nearly the same as the Whitby class, but the Leander was slightly larger.Also the Leander class frigate was one of the most seaworthy ships the Navy ever built. Which was reassuring.
We would (on occasion) stop in the middle of the ocean and have "Hands to bathe" in other words everyone would jump overboard.I only deemed this necessary if the ship was sinking.
They used to put out the boats "booms" forward and aft and then pipe "hands to bathe between the booms". My mate Nobby on the Arrow once added "boom, boom, too late, which I thought was bloody funny.
To quote Micky Gobles (HMS Brilliant) "There's things in the sea that crawl up your bum and have wild parties", that puts you off a bit.
My best mate on the Apollo was "Fez Parker". Fez was a bit of a nutter, like me really, there was also "Spike Hughes" and together we were like the three Amigo's. We all went to Fez's parents house in West Bromwich for a piss up one weekend, by the time we left the house was just about wrecked. Spike had managed to pull the sink off the bathroom wall, kick a plug socket from the bedroom wall and break a lamp in the front room.it's a good job fez's parents had a sense of humor. Spike bought them 2 bottles of wine as a thank you/sorry, but ended up drinking them both before he had chance to hand them over. As for Spike I don't know what happened to him, I haven't seen him since the day I left the Apollo