Making my way back to the harbour side and Bulwark on our last night in Istanbul, I came across a street vendor selling Afgan coats from a handcart. I stopped to look and found myself swept up by the stitching, the fur, the possibility of an original Christmas present and the smell: the skin these coats were made from did niff a bit to say the least.
After a suitable amount of haggling and a search for the right size and colour, I made a purchase feeling sure that Lesley would enjoy wearing a real Afgan as opposed to the imitations available in Newport’s high street shops. The trader folded the coat and wrapped it in brown paper, then tied up my bundle and I carried it away feeling very pleased with myself.
Back in the mess I started to wonder what I was going to do with my new purchase: it was far too big for my personal locker. The other guys and I had already managed to use up the various odd bits of storage available in the radio offices and I was stumped. In the end I decided there was no alternative, unpacked the coat and hung it in mess’s communal coat locker.
The next morning Bulwark slipped her moorings and with the ship’s company dressing ship, turned her bulk in the midst of the stream and headed back down the Bosphorus towards the Mediterranean once more.
As we made our way through the Dardanelles Straits I reflected on the fact that my first cruise had turned its mid-point and that we were in fact on our way home; of course that didn’t mean we were going home in any great hurry.
Exiting into the Aegean, we ran into some quite violent weather. So far Bulwark had been a completely stable platform and I’d grown used to the fact that our ‘flat-top’ was indeed always flat. Time for another new experience then as the old lady began corkscrewing her way through the waves.
The Mediterranean is an odd place. The sea is almost landlocked and not particularly deep, so when a storm does blow up, there’s nowhere for the water to go. We’re not talking little choppy waves here, but swells that don’t seem to know which way they want to go. Large vessels, like aircraft carriers and tankers, find their structures having to absorb great strains.
I’d never been seasick before in my life, but like many others I found Bulwark’s straining, creaking motion hard to cope with. If you stood toward the rear of the flightdeck and looked forrard, you could watch the ship’s bow lift and twist. In the bowels of the boat the twisting motion was far worse and the temptation to walk on the bulkheads as well as the deck was high. Whether it was the visuals that upset me most or the churning of my gut as it tried to make sense of the motion I know not, only that my overpowering need was to puke.
I ran as best I could to make a weather deck, leaned out over the rail and made the most basic of mistakes: never throw anything into the wind. I spewed and quickly found myself covered in my own slime. Charming!
Never let anyone tell you Mal d’Mer is a figment of the imagination, it’s not. Seasickness is one of the worst experiences there is; all the more credit then to Admiral Lord Nelson, who was sick every time he put to sea.
My solution was to find a place out of the way in a corner of one of the HF mast bays. I curled into a ball and just lay on the grilled deck. As I chucked up, so my vomit simply dripped away into the sea below me. I lay there for hours…
The storm blew itself out in the night and the morning dawned bright and clear. I’d survived my sickness and was tucking into bacon and eggs when Wiggy arrived beside me at the table. “Hello Taff. Feeling better then? Best cure for seasickness there is, a good breakfast.” He quipped. “Plenty of greasy bacon, eggs and beans; when you spew it’ll just slide back on its own grease!” For some reason I didn’t feel very hungry anymore.
We met up RFA Grey Rover and replenished our fuel-oil stocks, the two ships sailing side-by-side and connected by the umbilical pumping its life blood into Bulwark’s thirsty heart.
And so to our next destination and the first on our homeward bound leg; Athens, city both ancient and modern, or to be more precise Piraeus, the port on which Athens relies.
