After several months patrolling the East coast of the UK, Tyne began the month by heading back into the Channel and West Coast, giving everyone onboard a welcome change of scenery.
Tyne’s boarding teams quickly began to work their way through the Southwest fishing fleets, carrying out routine inspections of their fishing gear and catch to insure that regulations governing the fishing industry, worth over £500 million a year to our economy, are followed.
The Ship made a brief call into Tor Bay, anchoring just outside the town of Brixham.
The chance to enjoy a little R&R was seized by everyone as the Ship’s Company enjoyed a ‘Hands To Bathe’ and lively inter-mess game of Bucketball while the Senior Rates put on a fantastic barbeque.
Back at sea, Tyne stopped off briefly in Devonport for a routine visit where she was joined by Rev Simon Horne (PORFLOT Chaplain) who spent 8 days onboard spending time with the Ships Company and being available to discuss any issues that they may have.
Rev Horne also managed to get thoroughly stuck in with the everyday running of the ship, getting his hands dirty accompanying the boarding teams on fishery inspections as well as down in the engine rooms with the Marine Engineers.
The Ship then headed north to Holyhead in North Wales in support of major joint exercises in the area.
The weather which had been so kind to us in the Channel took a turn for the worse, and Tyne took a short detour from her route north to come to the aid of two kayakers forced to send a distress call after becoming stranded off the coast of Wales.
Working with Holyhead Coastguard, Tyne was quickly on scene to offer assistance, as the kayakers were safely recovered by the RNLI lifeboat.
Once alongside in Holyhead, the weather continued to deteriorate; as the rest of the country suffered from severe flooding, Holyhead was lashed by the worst storm for 30 years forcing Tyne to remain alongside and unable to take part in the exercise.
Looking ahead, Tyne will return to her base port, Portsmouth for Directed Continuation Training to keep Ship’s Company on top form for more fishery protection tasking and other exercises before the ship heads back to Pompey for a scheduled maintenance period towards the end of the year.
[mappress] Naval Today Staff,October 04, 2012; Image: Royal Navy