I was woken up at 0630 not by the usual “wakey wakey” pipe but by one of my cabin mates alarms. Turns out that I am sharing with a civil servant who provides policy advice to the Command and a Lieutenant Colonel from the Norwegian Army who is acting as an umpire for the exercise. Unlike my last two times at sea, instead of having an ensuite, I had to wander down the passageway to the communal showers. If you could keep the push button on they turned out to be much better than the one at home with lots of pressure.
Home sweet home – it’s a long way to the top
After breakfast I met the ships logistics staff and the logistics staff of the command element onboard. It was the latter who had arranged to get me out to the ship and with whom I would be spending the majority of my time. I tagged along to plenty of meetings throughout the day to get a feel for how they interact with the ships logistics department to provide support to the land forces.
I also took the opportunity to go up to the bridge, where I could see snow on the upper decks, so that I could have a look at the fjords in the daylight. Even with relatively poor weather it was absolutely stunning with snow-covered mountains all around us. These mountains were, however, causing absolute havoc with the local weather and there were gusts of wind that went from 0 knots up to 55 knots and back down again in just a few minutes. We also sailed into what looked like fog but turned out to be a massive snow shower but again it only lasted a few minutes. Makes me feel for the troops on the ground and reminds me why I joined the Navy and not the Army. Cloud cover again so no northern lights this evening.
Snow at sea – never seen that before
Map of the area with potential landing beaches marked
HMS ILLUSTRIOUS silhouetted against the mountains
The bad weather sets in
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