Best Trip - Worst Ship

1979, serving in the Royal Navy as a Senior Rating, Marine Engineering Artificer and serving at HMS Osprey, (Portland), I requested a sea draft and was drafted, (posted) to HMS Antrim, pictured above.
I joined knowing that she was off to the West Indies  in 1980 as guard ship for around four months.
HMS Bristol caught fire and was badly damaged, as a result of the damage the Antrim was appointed as flagship of the Global 80 Deployment. The knock on effect of this was almost 30% of the ships company asking to switch ships or to be posted ashore so as to get out of being away for a year.

The Best; we sailed in the early part of the year and off we went; Gibraltar - Istanbul - Karachi - Singapore - Hong Kong - Tokyo - Kagoshima - Shanghai - Hong Kong - Singapore - Bombay - Gibraltar - Portsmouth. We were late back due to the Iran-Iraq war starting and the Gulf Patrol commencing. I thoroughly enjoyed the deployment, the trip of a lifetime.

The Worst; For a long time I was the only Devonport Engine Room Senior Rating onboard, this meant that Monday to Thursday I lived onboard the ship, even in Portsmouth. The usual practise would have been that I would keep the duties during the week allowing the guys who lived locally to go home and on the rare occasion that I had a weekend duty they would cover me so that I could have weekends at home. Not so on the Antrim, many a night I would sit in the mess alongside the duty guy, particularly annoying on a Saturday or Sunday. It wasn’t just the Chiefs mess, it was also happening in the PO’s mess.
They seemed to have ‘a thing’ about Guzz (Devonport) ratings onboard Pompey ships.

My thoughts often return to the mixed emotions regarding the Antrim, one day I might go to a reunion.