RFA Wave Ruler

"You know, you sail around the world, you see hundreds of people. But sometimes you meet a guy who's just a real good guy."

OK, this could have been the alcohol talking. But I still took it as a compliment as I stood in the Officer's Bar on board the RFA Wave Ruler, on Monday night. Gordon has been blasting the Red Hot Chili Pipers all night. Now we are listening to Deep Purple played on the bagpipes. The bar closes at 11:00 so about 10:30 the songs began. "Scotland our home, we shall murmur, murmur, murmur." I sing along, "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon." What did you say? "Olive juice."

30 minutes earlier the conversation was even louder, talking about the intricacies of cricket. Something about scoring six points if the ball bounces once, one if the batters cross, something "murmur, murmur" the ball bounces twice, and all eleven batters are out when the ball hits the wicket. I think we were speaking English, but I swear I am only catching every other word.

"Why is it that the English can invent a game, teach everyone to play, and now they are all better than us," the Chief Petty Officer says. "We taught the Indians to play, now they play better than us. We taught the Jamaicans to play, now they play better than us. We taught the Aussies to play, now they play better than us."

I reply, "What, ya, exactly, mate!"
"There was one?"

A couple hours ago I was on the flight deck at a very nice cocktail party for the Governor. The guest list had been 122, but only about 40 people came. But all my new friends are here; Ensign James, Tard, and Officer Cockburn.

"Tard, are you serving drinks tonight, or drinking drinks tonight?"

"I've been drinking since the minute I started serving," is the reply.

Seven members of the crew spent the day at the museum cleaning brush from the back of the National Arboretum. They arrived at 9:00. By 11:30 they had most of the brush cleaned and trash raked up. My goal is to get this area cleaned out, so that the neighbors stop using it as a dump. The crew built a compost pit for the leaves. We also began lime washing the garden walls to remove the tagging (Eventually, Joseph and I painted 20 gallons worth of lime wash this week). Most of the crew have been scratched and cut to pieces by the thick thorns of the underbrush.


At 11:30 I went to get Poop Deck chicken. I had told them I would provide the best fried chicken in the world and a case of beer. They agreed I was spot on about the chicken. By 12:30 the beer was gone and I had to get a second case. The crew received a VIP tour of the museum, and spent the rest of the day snorkeling.

A few of them wanted to see the pirate canon collection, so I took them into the lab. One of the older guys, a crewman named Mick, saw that we had ships insignia badges and wanted to have a look. Royal Navy ships occasionally present a ship's badge to the Governor's office when they call to Grand Turk. We have 42 of them in our collection. Mick new most of the ships and organised the collection by ship type. He gave me quick stories that I attached with sticky notes. I have been trying to organise and make sense of this collection since I have been here. what I could not do in 8 months, Mick did in 30 minutes. Two of our badges are significant, in that they are from ships that were sunk during the Falklands War in 1982. Mick was visibly moved at recognising one that he witnessed the sinking of.

Three of the guys who came to work at the museum had been part of the detachment that took the Museum Kids Club through the ship on Saturday. We took 5 kids on board for a one hour tour on Saturday morning. 15 kids had signed up for the program, but only 5 showed up. They had assigned 5 crewmen and Ensign James to our tour. Because our numbers were so small, each child basically received a personal escort. Everyone went out of there way to show the kids exactly what they did on board the ship. We toured the Rasco, and the bridge, and each kid sat on the 30MM canon and turned it around like a theme park ride. Our hour tour turned into a two hour tour and ended with refreshments and biscuits in the Officer's Bar.

Last week I was in Pine Cay and Provo for most of the week. Right before I left, I received a phone call from the Governor's office that a Royal Fleet Axillary ship was to be in port over the weekend. These ships are crewed by civilians but serve Royal Navy warships. The Wave Ruler is in the Caribbean on hurricane patrol. And among other things, carries relief supplies. This was last minute because of security, but the ship was interested in giving some tours and they wanted to know if the Museum's Kids Club would want to come on board. The Governor's staff thought that they might be able to free up some crew for a work detail at the museum as well. I had staff put together a last minute radio announcement for Kids Club and told them I would be back on Saturday to take care of whatever happened with the ship.

I told the Governor's staff that the museum would do whatever we could to make this a good stop for the crew. Whatever I did, they told me, "make sure you provide beer because English sailors like to drink in port."

This was a very busy week, but I thought it would be fun to get on board and see what the ship was like. You never know what can happen here.