Yes, you read that right, Southampton Water is currently closed to all crafts due to Fawley refinery having a serious gas leak! It has been closed since approx 10pm Tuesday! Apparently the leak is from ship that is moored at the terminal!
Another opportunity for men with clipboards, yellow jackets and hard hats to tell people what to do and be generally offensive! Health and Safety Rules !
Saw an offficial tree planting ceremony on TV recently where the officials were all wearing hard hats and the obligatory yellow jacket yet the guest HRH Princess Royal was in her normal clothes is she exempt or does she have divine intervention on her side?
Another opportunity for men with clipboards, yellow jackets and hard hats to tell people what to do and be generally offensive! Health and Safety Rules !
Saw an offficial tree planting ceremony on TV recently where the officials were all wearing hard hats and the obligatory yellow jacket yet the guest HRH Princess Royal was in her normal clothes is she exempt or does she have divine intervention on her side?
Go on.. explain the correlation between the Health and Safety "overkill" whilst planting a tree and a large LPG leak.
Go on.. explain the correlation between the Health and Safety "overkill" whilst planting a tree and a large LPG leak.
Quite right Jono, a recently planted tree falling on HRH could be quite serious, Fawley refinery going bang, well what would we loose if Southampton disappeared of the face of the earth, its not like they can play football or anything......
No my friend think of the opportunities, they would need a new refinery, how much is one of those? The hamble would be rid of all those yachts that never go anywhere, so lots of moorings would now be available and finally Drivers Wharf gets a new ash surface to fill the pot holes in. Would just need a short stumpy bloke with a pair of boots to level it.
I was out on tuesday night returning to Ocean Village from Ryde at about 10.45pm with a mate onboard after doing some navigation practice. Whilst heading up the solent I heard a bit of chat between vts and the police launch about shutting the river down but didn't hear the full message of what they were shutting.
When we reached calshot we were met by the harbour master stopping us by shining his 20 million watt spot light directly is our face and almost blinding us! We stopped straight away!! He came accross and told us that Southampton water was closed to all traffic and we could go into the Hamble if we wanted but no further!
When I asked when we would be able to get through again he simply said 'when we decide to let people past again'! very helpfull!
We thought about hanging around for a while to see what happened or taking the radar reflector down and rinsing past with the lights off but in the end we decided to leave the rib in Hamble Point and called my missus to come and pick us up, which went down like a lead ballon at that time of night! This turned out to be a good decision as they kept it shut till 6 am! Didn't fancy sleeping on the rib in october without a sleeping bag at the least!
I cycled back to hamble in the morning to get the rib and go to work in it. The kind chaps at Hamble point didn't charge me for leaving the boat there due to the circumstances.
I called down to the RYA on wednesday afternoon and they were still spraying water onto the ship from a tug so there must have still been some gas leaking out 18 hours later!
A good night on the water ended up finishing 3 hours later than planned but i did have nice ride back to ocean village in the morning playing in the 2 metre wash from a tanker all the way from hamble to dock head!!
