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.

When a 3" rocket explodes millions of tiny pieces of tin foil float through the air, which show up on enemy radar as a "contact", so hopefully the missile will go for that in stead of us. Fortunetly we never got to use them for real.

Spike and I were also the surface radar team in the ops room when we were on watch.

Scouse Johnson rowing the paint punt, this vessel was used as a last resort for painting the ships side. Basically 2 floats a bit of wood and a hand rail, still it got the job done.

We were forever painting the ships side, the ship must have weighed a good few tons more with all the coats of paint on it, especially as the primer was red lead graphite and a pot of that was qiute heavy on its own.

Being a member of the 'side party' was not too bad actually, you ginda worked your own hours as long as the job was done.

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, as it was on this day, working on the upper deck wasn't so bad you could catch some rays at the same time.

But life at sea did seem to be one continuous round of cleaning and painting during the day and watch keeping or drinking at night, but hey what else was there to do.

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. The Gulf patrol was patrolling the Straights of Hormuz when Iran was the main threat, seems like things come around as the same thing is happening again now only for different reasons.

Good time in Mombasa though, letting off steam for 2 weeks. I think I invited lots of people onboard one drunken day, but was too hung over to show them round, so Scouse Johnson did it for me, cheers Scouse.