Falkland Islands Deployment

Recently, I have been, or the ship has been doing the following:

• Sailing around in made up navigational boxes at sea
• playing war games with the new typhoon aircraft (the new eurofighter)- and believe me, they're awesome. Beyond words. The only aircraft I've seen with so much manoeuvrability that it can kind of handbrake turn in the sky to change direction, giving it the ability to really swarm on the ship.
• Had a lovely meal at the Brasserie in Stanley
• We tried to get ashore on one of the local Islands, found the weather was to rough for our RIB, and ended up almost sinking it! Unfortunately my camera got very wet and I had to dry it out for 24 hours...
• Met COMPORFLOT (Commodore of the Portsmouth Flotilla), and preached to him about driving 10,000 miles for Charity. He loved the idea and wanted to help us out with sponsors. Awesome news! (see below).

And for the rest of the time, if it wasn't work, I'd been working with Olly on our Mongol Rally project- and this is what we've achieved so far:

1. Our website is up and running with official logos and everything (Thanks Gemma-www.gcgb.org.uk)
2. We have our first sponsor, who are going to buy our car for us!
3. We gained the backing from Command and from COMPORFLOT... which could be gold-dust, just waiting to see what comes of it.
4. The fleet PR team are also in on our little project
5. The Captain has kindly dealt us a major prize for our fund-raising raffle: A day out at sea on HMS Gloucester...!

We are also waiting on a whole load of other bits of news. It's very exciting, our project has really taken off since the management have got hold of it, and our MEO is backing us all the way. After a month and a half in the dark, we're really feeling positive about how much progress has been made! If you've read to here and still don't know what I'm talking about, it's worth clicking on our website link and taking a quick look... http://www.gcgb.org.uk/