Navy Net - Royal Navy Community

Register a free account today to join our community
Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site, connect with other members through your own private inbox and will receive smaller adverts!

Thank f**k thats over

I'll preface this by saying it's a loooon time snce I've done a BOST, COST or any other kind of workup.

It seems though that the worst thing that ever happened to FOST was leaving Portland. Only ht eflight were ever RA there so at least you had a full ships company together all week and apart from the marred lads at weekends too. There was many a debrief in the Breakwater as the mess cleared before the evening FOSTis evolution, firex, etc. where we "discussed" the days activities and how we could 1 up the seariders. It sems that back then, especially post '82 FOST was really trying to teach you how to fight the ship and survive, not acting like a look at me I know everything just ask me and I'll tell you bunch. Back then FOST was full of been there done that, learned this lesson blokes who had valuable things to say and on the whole we listened, they really were instructors not black cat merchants, the teams all had experience on the type of ship they were seariders on, so a T42 guy never messed about on a T21. Don't get me wrong Staff Sea Check (SSC), was always a btch and we could never secure for sea to their satisfaction, but when a ship left Portland after 6 weeks of BOST we knew our stuff, had a great team spirit and looked forward to our deployment as a ay to blow off steam and try some of the stuff we had just practiced.

Still the best part about any Portland work-up was Summer time in Weymouth, fantastic memories.
 
angry_mac said:
Fost is relevant, the best training in the world, as many foreign navies testify. It is also the best way to gel a ships company into one fighting efficient grey messenger of death.
My original point is, it now takes 11 weeks to achieve what we use to do in 6.
FOST is now also a policy maker, therefore it now has a hand in not just how the navy is trained, but how it is run, hmmmmm vested interest, feathering one'e own nest etc etc.
Joe Crow is right about the amount of bods in FOST as well, is it becoming too big and unwieldy? Did my FF really require 120 seariders on our staff sea check?
Plus what happened to Cornwall in the Gulf, has had massive repercussions in how Sea Training is now delivered, and the standards have been somewhat elevated by FOST to ensure that the * up never happens again. Unfortunately F99 is now reaping that particular whirlwind, poor *.

Now the dust has settled a bit, perhaps it is time to come back to that one. The reason foriegn navies use FOST is that they want to save themselves the expense of running there own sea training orgs. That hardly justifies the comment best in the world. Perhaps a good start would be to make it a requirement to have completed a full sea draft in each rate before serving at FOST. There is a massive credibility gap at the moment, and addressing that would be a good start.
 
Having spent 18 months at Portland as part of FOST staff I can only agree with most of the comments on this subject. It was a superb draft, only spoilt by some of the **** sea riders (don't make me laugh if it was over force 4 there was always a good excuse not to go) I was not a sea rider but worked in the comcen on PXN which was the busiest morse circuit. Sad sod that I was I loved it. After leaving Portland I joined the Plymouth out of refit in Chatham and, of course, back to Portland for workup. Must say I enjoyed that bit as well, it held no fears as I knew half of the "old and bold" didn't have a clue about our equipment and, in some cases, had never had a proper sea draft for years. It was still a good experience and yes the ships company came together, although we had already done than by living in 1 mess at HMS Pembroke. (Didn't count though) Must say loved Portland so much am going for a couple of weeks holiday in Weymouth in middle of Sept, no ships now and no chance of getting in the dockyard. :thumright:
 
can someone please enlighten me as to what BOST, COST, DOST, EOST etc are.

if you mean the Partial TAG sign that appeared on my door then I'm with you -

otherwise, a sphincter says what
 
My biggest problem as a WAFU, is that you learn how to conduct serials (weapon loading, crash rescue etc) at the appropriate school, then a matter of a few weeks later, FOST come on board and start dishing out the bollockings for incorrect procedures.

These drafts, much like QA managers etc, attract the wrong kind of people which is why we gets these ****-retentive mongs with God complexes.

When CPO Stokers start trying to tell me about how to conduct an aircrew rescue as part of a crash on deck exercise, I start to lose my rag.
 

Latest Threads

New Posts

Top