did anyone admit anyfing? - I can’t remember apologizes just court martials - I don’t think anyone even offers them on armistice day - I good apology clears the air!
Yes it does, but, the default is not programmed that way.
I’m saying Good Night Possums. X
So am I. X.
good morning from here - but we were always one step ahead!
Saturdays on HK harbor
My usual sail without too many mishaps was small craft racing on HK habour waters. A Chinese friend of mine was obsessed with sailing but could never get regular ‘crew’ so when I volunteered at some boozy house party he held me to it. He had a small 10 foot ‘enterprise’ sailing dinghy. I
would drive down the hill to his estate and park my little MM in his big Mercedes space and off we would tottle across the harbor to the RHK sailing club where he moored his dinghy on dry concrete land sitting on the frame and wheels.
We would check all on board equipment and wheel her to the slopping slip – launch her – return the frame and then try to sail her out of a windless corridor before reaching open sea
The day could of course be calm – one we always dreaded but fortunately the harbor usually had a stiff breeze. We would circle around ; looking for a good take off position before the pistol rang out and off we would go. I cannot ever remember winning a race maybe getting a third but for me it was just the fun of the whole thing in reasonably safe waters with a few exceptions and I was sailing in the China sea!
The exceptions were sailing just after a typhoon had passed through – some wouldn’t risk it but not my crazy doctor captain- his eyes glistened and pulse raced and he was ready to take on the Gods!
Keen winds gave a fast race with less crafts but pushing yourself to the limit could involved a snapped main mast which happened to us. Ya dead then in the water and have to wait for the rescue team to come and tow ya back to the club in humility and embarrassment!
The other risk in high winds was a boat capsize – ah what does one does in the middle of the china seas with a capsized boat. There is a ‘righting a capsize’ manoeuvre – this involves the rather strange behavior of standing on the boat bottom and pulling on the emerged mast until it rights itself throwing yourself back in the brink. Then it is back in the boat and start bailing out. I think it only happened once thank goodness, as they used to say if you submerged in HK harbor you would float back to the surface with bubonic plague; typhoid and a slight cold!!
The only other potentially dangerous manoeuvre was in a windless sail, sailing into the eaves of a moored super tanker. If you did, your small craft would get smashed against the tanker and than you would permanently be in the brink. This again only happened once but I had never heard my medical captain use such blue language in all my life – paddle ; paddle for feck sake paddle was the captains call! And I was closest to the tanker – did I go !
Next: aboard a Junk on the china seas!
Went out to get the washing in yesterday, and there was a £10.00 note attached to the front of each of my pairs of trousers, bloody Fly Tippers again.
Gummy I started feeling Sea sick just reading this.
Your poor wifey must have been worried sick about you.
I am not good with small boats, I would have been scared stiff. I am OK with ships though. I have been on several RFA, when in Port, mostly the crew mess for drinks.
Love your stories though. xxxx
Aye It was rough in HK waters. What with cheap booze and Mamasan trying to sell her ‘daughters’ to every passing boat
Junk sailing from HK to Macau was fraught with danger mainly from tripping over a Tiger beer bottle or a discarded Dim Sum 
Well shiver me timbers, that tanker would have made mince meat outa the lot of wiz had ya not paddled like blazes, reminds me of that old song “Heave away haul away we’re bound for South Australia’’
You should jot all those yarns down so your great grand children can read then all Gummy, but you probably have done so already, good on ya.;-)
My paternal grandad was a train driver and I remember reading an account he had prepared for an inquest, he was long dead by the time I got to read it, it was written in pencil and described what happened before his fireman was decapitated when going under a bridge on the track from Dublin to Cork back in the early 1920’s.
To make a fat story thin, the fireman, a chronic alcoholic, had hidden a bottle of booze in the coal carriage and had been drinking whiskey against all regulations, my grandad tried everything to get the whiskey bottle from him but he was a huge fella and it was impossible, he had decided to report the matter at the next stop which was half an hour away.
The chap was as high as a kite and was singing and dancing about the footplate, he stuck his head way out the side of the engine not noticing they were approaching a tight bridge and that was that, the head was gone and the rest of him lay on the footplate beside my grandad, he never got over that, and I needn’t tell you I was shocked reading it, he had never mentioned it to any of us when he was alive, maybe that had something to do with him always being grumpy in his retirement years when I knew him.:shock:
Spitty I didn’t want to post this in your ’sift’ thread as it’s way off topic.
My cousin Freddy used to work on the JCB that shifted the sand to be sifted before it went off to an egg timer factory in Saudi Arabia, they used to turn out a million and a half egg timers per week back then, but they had to let the staff go after the salmonella outbreak when Edwina Currie ruined the egg industry after that speech she made. I have to say I haven’t looked at an egg myself since, as the archaeologists say, the thing about an egg and a seed is they never die, they just keep rolling around in yer belly till kingdom come. They don’t say eggs is eggs for nothing you know.
The 30th Anniversary of Eggwina day is coming up soon, one thing is for sure, egg producers won’t be celebrating it, they spent 30 years trying to make us forget it.
“December 3, 1988: Edwina Currie sparks outrage with
‘salmonella in most eggs’ claim, She put it down to a slip of the tongue, but the colourful junior health minister’s remarks led to a drastic fall in egg sales and eventually her resignation”
My Uncle Freddy’s JCB thing in Saudi Arabia.;-)
https://i.postimg.cc/ZnHCLgLH/Sifting-sand.jpg
Never heard that before Spitty.
I had to have a lie down after reading one of Jem’s posts.
It’s all logical stuff Sweetie, straight from the database.
Losing his head?:shock:
Not if you’ve been on a Sandwich course.
I used to live near Sandwich in Kent, does that count?
Only if you know which side you bread is buttered.
Mmm Ham was nearby.
Did you get a meal “Deal”.