Unwanted

It has been a hectic two weeks since I last wrote my blog.  I had an extra week at home to look after little William and Debbie which was much appreciated.  It was so good to get him home from hospital and see him on the road to recovery. The last night I was home I did have a scare though as I had put his Moses basket on the sofa while I went to make a bottle and when I came back in he had wriggled so much that the basket was on the floor.  Thankfully he was fine, but it was scary.  Anyway we were lucky that night as he went for six hours before waking up so we had a reasonable sleep.  Since then Debbie tells me he goes for a reasonable amount of time most nights now so she is managing to get some sleep.

 

Anyway I was all ready to rejoin the ship on the south coast last Friday when I got a call from them telling me they would be up in Scotland.  After a mild panic about how I was going to get up to Scotland we managed to arrange for me to join on the Thursday via helicopter whilst the ship was still in areas. This was much easier than a hike all the way north.

 

On re-joining I found that all the programmes had changed and that we were now heading north for an exercise.  It was all very hectic trying to get up to speed on what we would be doing and trying to get all the information.  After all, the other ships had had weeks to prepare and we were getting a few days.  Anyway just as I was getting my feet under the table the CO called me to say he was worried about taking me North incase the little one was ill again, he had therefore decided that if we could not get an extra first officer onboard he wanted me swapped over.  As you can imagine this came as a bit of a shock and made feel very unwanted.  Even worse it looked as if, if I did get transferred I would be stuck up in Scotland and alongside for weeks.  Not what I wanted, for a start it would mean I probably wouldn’t see Debbie and the little ones for quite a while.  Also we were arranging to have little William Christened on here in April.  Being on the FOST tanker had at least meant that at weekends Debbie could have popped down for the afternoon when we were in port.  It’s not so easy getting from North Devon to Scotland though.

 

I did try and explain that the little man was a lot better and that there wasn’t any cause for concern. After all the ship wasn’t going to be away for that long.  The CO is easy to talk to and did acknowledge that he understood how I felt but the he felt he was between a rock and a hard place.  However after our chat he wouldn’t budge and was adamant about what he wanted. 

 

I fretted about this transfer all weekend as I really didn’t want to go and come Monday when we hadn’t heard anything I felt happier as I thought it had all blown over.  I was really looking forward to having a decent period at sea and getting to see the Northern Lights again.  Well you can imagine my disappointment yesterday morning when the CO called me in to say I would be transferred tomorrow.  I have now got to lug all my gear from one side of Scotland to the other to sit alongside for weeks.

 

I only hope that the phone signal is reasonable where I am going.  If it is I might stand a chance of getting the Webcam and Skype up and running and then at least I should be able to see Debbie and the little ones.