We left Barbados and headed off for some more drug busting. This time we were searching for a cargo vessel called the Northern Star or something or other. We had some pretty sound intel that it was carrying a massive haul of Columbian chang. Our helo spent the best part of two weeks flying about looking for the fucker and my hat really goes off to the Wafus on the rare occasion that they actually did any work.
We finally found it and two boarding parties (ours and the yankees) began securing it. It was pretty awesome to be honest, stopping this massive ship that we were convinced was carrying the biggest haul of chang known to man. We expected the crew to be armed and to offer resistance, so every gun on the upper deck was manned and I had a jimpy on the bridge wing. My young mind had visions of heroics with me blowing up the ship with carefully aimed bursts. Unfortunately my Die Hard moment didn't come. In fact no one's did.
Our boarding party searched the ship for days, a team of stokers even went across and cut open bulkheads and decks but we found nothing except for a few small arms. The ship had evidently been kitted out for something though as it had hidden storage compartments in the fuel tanks. Unfortunately we had caught it before it made the pick up and we had to let them go. We watched as they sailed away and we went to St Lucia to drown our sorrows.
St Lucia was lovely, a quiet island, the sort of place people go on honeymoon. There was a KFC just outside the dockyard, where I somehow managed to walk out with about £100 more change than I should have, a combination of the bird behind the counter being thick and most places in St Lucia accepting 3 different currencies.
Obviously, we found the whore bar straight away where I got a three way nosh with two Wafus from my mess. One of them spaffed on the other's leg which was pretty funny, so funny infact that I couldn't continue and had to retire early. We bumped into the same bird the following evening, plying he trade at the Sandals resort. I seem to remember everyone getting pretty smashed while we were there and I recall eating an absolutely rank chicken liver and sea urchin kebab. A karaoke bar features somewhere in my memories and I seem to recall a lad called Alf impressing a load of yank tourists with his pretty good rendition of a Robbie Williams tune. St Lucia came and went without much incident and we headed off for yet more drug patrols.
Back into defence watches we went and the monotonous boredom of sea set in. We played stupid word games on watch to pass the time and would count down the seconds until the end of our watches. This time I had drawn the Morning/Afternoon watch (1am until 7am - 1pm until 7pm) which was a lot worse, not least because you have lunch for breakfast when you get up for your afternoon watch. I could never get used to eating roast dinner when I'd just got out of bed.
After stopping virtually every small boat in the area, we finally got lucky and stopped a sailing yacht with a middle aged Austrian couple onboard. They'd decided to supplement their pension by doing a one off coke run in their boat. We recovered £58 million worth in the end but they had thrown loads more overboard, at the time it was the biggest drugs bust in history.
Finally it was time to go home and after quick stops in Puerto Rico (more whoring, Bacardi 151 and American chicks) and The Azores (It's a catholic country and we were there on Sunday, nuff said) we headed back to Pompey, first dropping off the advance party who would take leave early to cover the duty watch while we went on leave.
The first leave lads took great pleasure in winding us up about the fact that they were going home two weeks before the rest of us. They graffitied the ship with 'FLIB' (First Leave Is Best) and fucked off to get flights back. We finally arrived in Pompey the night before we were due and anchored off Southsea, it was torture and you could hear the slags coming out of Jo's. Knowing that we were so close to home yet so far. It didn't stop us celebrating though. Channel night was epic, we got absolutely cunted and even the Skipper came down the mess for a tin. We stuck a smaller lad to the deckhead with black maskers and played human kerplunk, taking a strip of tape off with each turn. If your strip caused him to fall to the ground, you were the next one to be stuck up. I still have the carpet burn scar on my nose from when I headbutted the deck as a I fell.
The next morning we raised anchor, donned our number 1s and sailed into Pompey. As we passed round tower, I could see loads of people waving at us, some of whom had 'welcome home' and 'congratulations' banners because of our bust. As we neared the jetty, with a few celebratory blasts of the ship's horn, I spotted my family on the jetty, mum, stepdad, two sisters, uncle and grandfather had all come down to watch the ship come in. Leave was granted pretty much straight away and we all fucked off ashore but not before plastering the entire ship with 'SLIB' (Second Leave Is Best) Graffiti for the benefit of the advance leave party who had now finished their leave and were about to settle into two nice weeks of duties.
On returning home after my first deployment, I didn't feel like I'd changed much. Clearly I had though, my parents noticed that I had grown up, I noticed that my mates, many of whom were just starting their first year of A levels, were generally doing the same shit, but I had somehow moved on from that. I found that I had no trouble talking to or impressing girls any more, I made the most of this by banging as many of them as I could during leave, including my mate's sister who I had fancied for years.
Next chapter Far East deployment.
