so we where a bit disappointed that our convey partner, now know as cobra 8 blew us off completely for happy hour. karli and i sat there for about 30 minutes patiently waiting game set up and drink in hand until we looked over and saw all kinds of sail commotion on deck of our convey buddy. apparently they had decided to focus on sailing and not happy hour. we gave them a bit of a hard time about how this might be the reason their previous convoy abandoned them and how we might need to look for a new long term convey partner. it was all in good fun and as it turned out they redeemed them selves later on.

we had a great dinner of grilled bangers and mash and peas complete with ausi bbq sauce. one of our best dinners yet. before dinner and our aborted happy hour we also had another great flyover. i got a great picture and the key it turns out it for karli to be topless and wave at the pilots, it really brings the helos in close and ensures we will get repeat visits, i dont know why i did not think of this earlier. this was great because somewhere along the way our friend EU WARSHIP F576 had to run of to investigate some other suspicious contact so we wanted to encourage as many flyovers as possible.

i was supposed to do a work call at midnight when i came on watch but decided to put it off until we hit land. i did some emails and spoke to some of my guys on the sat phone but was not up for a 10 person conf call with everything going on. this turned out to be a good call as i got up for my watch just before midnight karli and cobra 8 where listening in on a merchant ship 15nm south of us reporting a suspicious contact we did our standard maneuver accelerated from 5kts to our flank speed of 6.5 kts and called ukmto. as we continued along at "flank" speed we saw our own suspicious contact astern, basically just a red light for a few seconds. cobra 8 was not taking any chances and escalated our call from ukmto up to marlo. as luck would have it marc got his buddy chris on the phone who was apparently standing duty. after the call cobra 8 reported "he is sending us another warship", we thought what a great job convey buddy, this totally made up for the happy hour debacle!

next thing we knew we had US WARSHIP 87 calling us on the VHF reporting they would be in position in 40 minutes. they seemed to show up even sooner than this doing 30kts and pulled into position behind us. they informed us that they would "launch the alert helo" and "sweep the area" for any "baddies" as karli refers to them. this was about 2 hours ago and no baddies where found they continue to steam behind us at our conserve fuel speed of 4.8 kts providing comfort and happiness for all on board. we also have a convey of about 20 merchant ships just north to us with multiple warship escorts so we are once again surnounded by miiltary assets, still no ausi ships much to karli's dismay!

i think i can speak for us all when we say we are way over this suspicious contact crap and looking fwd to sitting in Djibouti having a nice cold beer. on that note my friend lance (who spent 1 year plus in Djibouti) got back to us today with a contact of his there. we are looking forward to arriving to a friendly face and buying him some cold beer at an actual bar of some sort!

cheers, roger