Christmas 2002

The sad news of this year is that Max had to be put down just before Easter. We could no longer control his diabetes, and he was steadily loosing weight. However, with the insulin we did mange to get him an extra year, and he loved the extra space here. We had him for 12 ½ years, during which time he turned from a frightened scrap of grey fur who would not be picked up and hid under the furniture from strangers and noises, into a happy relaxed tabby cat who could do a very good fur collar impression. I miss him still. It would be nice to paint a picture of me & Maggie sharing our grief over the loss of her brother, but quite the opposite. She seems to have treated his departure as a welcome way of improving the human servant to cat ratio, and shows no sign whatsoever of missing him! Despite her now advanced age (13 ½) she is still a bouncy, demanding little Madam who is in good health (despite missing a few teeth).

On a more cheerful note, we have now built a garage. David refers to it as “the shed” but as we have plenty of space it is a large double garage, with a separate section for storage and an open loft above. It has swallowed the cars, all the tools, the gardening kit & all the diving kit easily. It is built with local stone (mixed size & colours of sandstone) and reclaimed roof tiles, so fits in reasonably well. However, the garden has taken a battering and I’ll need to do quite a lot of work to get the lawn back, and with digging trenches for the services the driveway, never particularly good, now has some amazingly deep mud patches. Next year’s project will need to be a driveway!

Work has been busy for me again this year, with a lot of travelling. I’ve been to Middletown, Ohio, which is the first trip I’ve done to the USA for many years. This was to visit the company who are building the core nozzle for the Trent 900 engine, and it was very interesting to see how they make the equivalent hardware for the Trent 500 engine, which has just entered service on the Airbus A340. I’ve also been to Toulouse a number of times, and to both Cadiz & Madrid in Spain. We are now past the major Design Reviews with the nacelle manufacturers, so the travelling should reduce a bit next year – which should be a relief to my long suffering neighbours who very kindly look after Maggie when I am away.

Unfortunately a combination of David’s schedule, and my commitments on the BSAC Instructor Training Scheme have meant doing relatively little diving this year. Our main trip was to the island of Mull, with a total of 17 divers, 8 others (including Mum) and 2 boats. We did get some good dives, but had a series of problems. The first was summer sea fog, where warm moist air sat over cool water, with zero wind. At altitudes above 50m or so it was crystal clear and sunny, but at seal level there was a good impression of cotton wool. This limited us for two days to very enclosed sites were we could ensure that we could see the divers when they surfaced. We also had some problems – the “new” club boat came with a very old Mercury outboard (which was effectively free as we paid a reasonable price for the hull only), and the starter motor went – so we practiced towing, past the lifeboat in Tobermory harbour. Armed with the knowledge that there were no spares available anywhere in the UK and with instructions from a very helpful person at Forth Yachts, we did get it working again, and were able to set off to do a dive I’ve wanted to do for some time. Bo Fascadale is a pinnacle reaching 2m from 50+m general depth, a couple of miles off the north coast of Ardamurchan. It can only be dived in calm conditions, both because of the distance (17nM from Tobermory) and because in any swell the waves are too big over the pinnacle. The dive was very good with a lot of life on the walls, but on the way back into Tobermory there was a loud bang and a puff of smoke so more towing practice – past a very amused lifeboat crew. This time it was terminal, a valve had gone into a cylinder. The boat now has a nice second hand Yamaha engine so next year should be more reliable! While we were diving Mum went off around Mull, seeing Golden Eagles, Buzzards and lots of other wildlife.

I had a good weekend trip to Lundy in the Bristol Channel. The island is owned by the National Trust and operated with the Landmark Trust, and we went out from the very pretty (and vertical) village of Clovelly on the North Devon coast, and then camped on the island on the Saturday night. This meant there was time to explore a bit, seeing some of the rare breeds (sheep & ponies) that live there. The diving was pretty good, and made better by the presence of quite friendly seals who came within a couple of metres to have a look at us.

The following day I flew out to Tallin in Estonia to meet David, who spent quite a lot of the spring in the Baltic working with the Latvian, Lithuanian & Estonia Navies joint Mine Countermeasures force, Baltron. The trip to Tallin was very interesting. The old walled city is still largely intact and very picturesque, and the weather in June was hot and sunny – very different from my last trip to the Baltic, Riga in November!

Like Riga, the city is interesting, and the people friendly. I think this is a good time to go to these countries – there is a lot of optimism, and there is enough in the way of restaurants, Museums etc without feeling like a tourist trap. Some of the buildings are quite amazing, with the contrast between the old stone fortifications, newer (18^th & 19^th century) townhouses and the extremely ornate Russian orthodox cathedral. David took the photograph below from inside a tower containing a museum.

The people David was working with were also interesting. The last commander of Baltron, Igor, was in Leningrad training with the Soviet Navy when the Baltic states regained their independence and took the brave decision to return to Estonia to join a hardly existing new Estonian Navy. He has since worked with the UK, USA and Germany. Estonia and the other two Baltic states have recently received an invitation to join NATO, which they will do in 2004. Most of the officers at David’s level are ex Soviet – the current Baltron commander actually commanded a Soviet patrol boat. One of the more surreal experiences was going to dinner in the old city, at a Russian restaurant in a cellar under one of main squares with Igor, his wife, Mark (an American commander, technical advisor to Baltron) and David. Both David & Mark trained originally to counter the Soviet threat, Igor was Soviet trained, and we were being served vodka from Moscow by a Russian waitress with our host ordering the meal in Russian!

However, if that was a culture shock, David then got an even bigger one. His next trip was to Murmansk, on board HMS Ramsey, for the Russian Navy’s equivalent of the old UK Navy Days. They were then joined by Admiral Sir Michael West, then Commander in Chief Fleet, and were given a grand tour of the Naval Base, and lunch on Peter the Great, a nuclear powered battle cruiser. This picture shows from the left, The RN Naval Attaché to Russia, Flag Lieutenant, Deputy Commander of the (Russian) Northern Fleet, Admiral West and 2 Russian Senior Interpretors. Photo by Cdr Bewick!

On board Ramsey, the crew set up an “English Country Fair” and introduced Russian children to apple bobbing…. The tour of the Base included some close views of interesting vessels. This one is an Oscar 2 Class nuclear guided missile submarine, a sister ship to the Kursk. The Intel people of Northwood swiped this picture off David when he got back!

Prior to these, David was involved in “Blue Game”, a NATO fast patrol & Mine Countermeasures Exercise based in Denmark. The dangerous looking bunch below are David and his core staff, who for some reason dress up in camouflage gear when away on exercise…. One of the interesting parts of this exercise was the use of dolphins, originally introduced in the Vietnam war as anti-swimmer weapons by the Americans, but now trained in a variety of anti-mine roles as well.

I think that over about 3 months, David went to Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia – St Petersburg, Baltisk & Murmansk, and passed through Sweden & Norway en route. Makes my odd trip to France look pretty pedestrian…. The picture shows David and the CO’s of Atherstone & Ramsey meeting the President of Latvia. As a souvenir of the trip, the RN was given an ex Soviet old fashioned contact mine by the Commander in Chief of the Lithuanian Navy. This now sits outside the offices in Faslane where David works, and the picture below shows him and his boss, Captain Walker, with the mine. Interestingly the Lithuanian CinC served on board Soviet Typhoon class submarines at the time David was on anti-submarine frigates, and was at sea on a sub when the news came through of the succession of the Baltic states form the USSR.

Last week I went up to Faslane for dinner on Wednesday night. I do not normally fly 250 miles for dinner, but this one was rather special – HMS Vengeance was entertaining the new General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland and his wife, and we were invited partly because David has the NI patrol boats under his command and partly because he is friends with the CO of HMS Vengeance. We went for a tour before dinner. For those not familiar with the names of RN ships, this was special because she is the fourth Vanguard class nuclear submarine, and hence ¼ of the UK nuclear deterrent. For obvious reasons, I don’t have any photographic proof of this tour! It was very interesting to see the contrast between the nuclear section, which was as expected very clean, shiny & high tech, into the steam plant at the rear which is technology that hasn’t changed for 50+ years. We also saw the missile compartment, which has 16 large tubes, each running the height of the pressure hull. The submarine is very big – at about 16,000 tons she is only slightly lighter than an aircraft carrier, but is much more crowded than a frigate, with corridors barely the width of David’s shoulders and the CO’s cabin slightly smaller than David’s was on HMS Bridport. After a very good dinner it was back up the 10m long vertical ladder to stand on one of the missile hatches on the casing, to be told that she carried more explosive power than has been expended in all the wars, mining activities etc, including all nuclear explosions to date since the world began. Scary.

We are going to Bath for Christmas, at the start of the celebrations of a number of important birthdays. David’s grandmother, Joan, is 80 next Tuesday, Uncle Julian is 60 in January and Great Aunt Rosie is 90 in May. This is an excuse for a number of parties, and for David’s parents to come over for a holiday next year. This year we have seen the Moffats – David’d brother Peter’s in-laws, who came over for a family wedding and a quick tour of Europe. I am always very impressed at the number of countries per week our Australian friends manage! Clare Moffat, Peter’s sister-in-law came to stay for a few days. I asked her what she would like to do – she picked looking at some scenery as she had seen numerous museums, churches and castles. So we went up into the Peak District on a rather grey wet day, had a look at Mam Tor and then went down one of the caves, which was a lot warmer than outside. We ended up at Chatsworth, which was all decorated for Christmas and looked very different by the light of candles and Christmas lights.

We both hope you have a very happy Christmas and interesting year ahead

Love

Clare & David