Now that wives are allowed to put a permanent stop to model making I guess I had better finish this section before I am unable to do so. Sort of re-writes the "have and to hold until death do us part" bit. I suppose now it really means that she can hold you really close to make sure the knife goes in where she means it to go. Followed by a Viking funeral in at least one of my models. So I'd better be on time for dinner tonight.
Back to the screed.
Big tanks when being driven on "normal" roads have rubber inserts in their treads to stop the road surfaces being chewed up. Similarly, when being carried aboard a ship, the tanks are sort of jacked up and rested on trestles to take the weight off their tired "feet"...and also to stop the rubber things letting the tank slide around. They are also securely lashed to the deck with all sorts of couplings and chains. All very secure, and the lashings are checked and re-tensioned every hour or so. But we were in a really vicious bit of weather by now. An LSL is well over 400ft long, but the swells we were meeting were so big and long that the whole ships length would go down one side of a wave, flatten out and whole length climb up the other side, balance on the top and start all over again. The wives and kids thought this was "normal" and so didn't worry. We did. Then the worst happened. A tank broke loose. Fortunately it was one of the centre (of 3) ones, but it was banging around like crazy. Ever really stopped to think how you would go about catching a 60 ton monster that had found freedom? Although it was somewhat constrained by the presence of the other tanks around it it was very clear that this could get a bit serious. So we had another Chinese Fire Drill. 20 Chinamen dashing around with lashings and trying to avoid being squashed. OK, it was serious, but from where I was sitting on the top of the renegade "trying" to get some sort of order into things it was absolutely hilarious.
Then a bit of the ships bottom fell off. Really. Luckily it was a plate at the bottom of an engine room cofferdam, which meant that any water coming into the ship would be held within the cofferdam and only rise to the ships waterline...which at this time was somewhat variable. This all made for a good excuse for the engineers to have "show you my hole" tours. A good variation on the Golden Rivet I think. All good stuff.
Eventually we came into calmer waters and anchored at 5 minutes to midnight on New Years Eve. Xmas must have been in there somewhere, but I have no memory of it at all. Sad really, as all the kids seemed to like it. Lots of mail and pressies arrived..and a great sigh of relief by us "drivers (including the engineers)" that we had come this far without anything really untoward happening.
Obviously the Panama transit was a new thing for the wives and kids (the kids still thought the alley sliding was better), but Panama is always a source of wonder, but it's funny what people remember years afterwards. While writing this bit I asked the potential knife wielder what she remembered ...."Pelicans" was the answer. OK, who am I to argue.
But then onwards and northwards. My own lasting memory of this leg was the constant rolling in the Pacific swell, how stupidly long is the coast of Baja California. To trot along at 16 knots fo a week or so and still be able to see the same blessed mountain is sort of depressing. Eventually we reached the Juan de Fuca Strait, the entrance to Seattle and Vancouver. It was at about this time that my young son showed a glimmer of common dog when he said to me that if he ever came back to Vancouver there is a faster way of doing it. And has flown ever since.
Normally, on a day to day basis, I would "make a pipe" to the assembled masses and tell them our speed, position and all that malarkey...but this time I really did have to give the mike to a 2/Off who spoke Queens English. Being a Geordie I could easily imagine the embarrassment of broadcasting the fact that we were now in the "Juann-de Fuccas" strait.
More later.
Oh, we're all reading it Bryan - much better than "Listen with Mother"!