Betty Benz

A few months ago while i was blabbering on about how sad it was that i had sold my BMW i made the decision to buy myself another car to entertain myself with.

I ended up buying a very rare very sexy very very cool, sexy very sexy classic mercedes. 



I found the car on a local auction site after having test driven a number of old Merc's.  Some good, some not so good, some so bad i walked away in disgust at the state the owners had let their cars get to. 

So after setting a budget I stumbled across the ad on the web and pretty much doubled what I had just allowed.

The gentleman who answered the phone was pretty upfront about the car, told me he loved it blah blah blah, the usual, well aside from the slurring it was the usual.  He told me to hurry the fuck up as it was getting dark and was about a half hour drive from town (at about 130kph)

Once we finally made it out to the house it was pretty much dark.  However the sight that greeted us was almost a deal maker for me.  There stood the owner Alex, leaning against the car, very full glass of red wine in hand.
One of the first things that he said to me is if i dont like you, i wont sell it to you. 

What can i say, Alex was a champion.  Took us for a drive completely shitfaced.  Asked for the money in hundred dollar bills which turned out to be a considerable wad of notes. Sold her to me on the conditions that i had to keep a packet of smokes in the car at all times and that i had to keep the name.  Sealed the deal with a fucking expensive glass of Scotch and then proceeded to pay the fine i got on the way home (136 in a 100 zone).  The rest is history.


I have been doing a fair bit of work on her over the last few weeks. 
with alot more money and time to be spent on her in the future as well... consider the rest a pictoral blog.

This is putting the original stereo back in the normal slot and rewiring the real working stereo into the glove compartment, ready for the subs and horrendously expensive front speakers to go in next

How to talk like a sailor

Its interesting the people who you come across while you are working.

Cue interesting conversation with fellow shipmate. 

Me –  “ fellow crewmate what did you used to do before you ended up on here?”

Fellow crewmate – “I was a fisherman, I used to fish in the Bering sea near Russia”

Me – “cool, what were you fishing for ?”

Fellow crewmate – “Whales”

Another one of the guys who looks after the seismic gear is an ex Submariner from England, who would often come up to the ECR (engine control room) in the wee hours of the morning and chew the fat for a while. 

Have learned some interesting things about the Royal navy in subsequent conversations...

Seafaring is an strange occupation in that there is so much that goes on effectively behind the scenes.  People really have no idea about alot of the things that we do and I guess to a certain degree it must be a little bit mysterious as to what we actually “do” while we are at sea for 6 months of the year.  In recent years seafaring has changed alot in regards to conditions onboard the ships and the areas in which they operate.  Which has, I suppose changed they way we do things, for example on the ship im working on at the moment, the engine room is completely automated.  Engines start and stop as they are required and literally everything can be controlled by a computer system.  In the old days if an engine broke down while it was running it would most certainly mean the lights would all go out.  Now; unless you are the engineer on duty, you would never even know anything had gone wrong.

On the other hand some things at sea don’t change alot and tradition is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many of the seafarers I have met.  There are alot of sayings and phrases that are a bit foreign to someone new to the industry. So, me being such a stand up guy have thrown together a few words to help you should you come face to face with a seafarer such as myself and you dont want to miss out on the riveting stories that we are known to tell of far off worlds and rough oceans.

How to talk like a Sailor

Al Capone – Telephone

Up the road – Bar (up the road to the frog and toad)

Dhoby – Washing

Turn to – Start work

Ginger beer – engineer

Shifter – Cresent wrench


Split something - open up machinery


Box something up - Put it back together


Toss off - do nothing


Break your balls - do something quickly


Got your papers - Have sailed over the Equator and have written proof signed by the Captain


Old Man - Captain


Donkey - Engine


Wave your ticket at it - Fix something someone ranked lower than you couldn't


Job and Knock - When the job is finished, you are finished


Now you know the basics you can throw a few swear words in there and bada bing you are off.


a few easy ones you can practise are: 


"The fuckin old man is busting my balls about ......"


"Job and knock, then fuck off up the road with the other ginger beers for a couple of brews"


and lastly one to practise for a while.   It takes a bit of conviction to pull it off...


"This is the third fucking time i have split that fucking purifier, if it doesnt get boxed up properly this time if gonna smash the fucking cu*t of a thing"


So as you may have noticed swearing is a big part of my job, it makes me feel good, gets frustration out and also makes me feel like i have power over something that is clearly getting the better of me. 


Many other sayings are also comprised in some way or misquoted from nautical sayings.

Such as the old, enough room to swing a cat.  People seem to think that you are expected to actually grab the family feline by the tail and I suppose test the available area in the room by rotating the by now distraught feline friend through a circular motion above and around your head.  You can imagine the results if your calculations were slightly off and there was infact NOT enough room to “swing a cat”.

The actual term comes from the olden days when lashings were commonplace and men were made of steel and ships made of wood.

The phrase goes “enough room to swing a cat o’ nine tails”

A cat of nine tails is a whip made out of rope with small knots on the end of which has as you can imagine nine tails. The original idea I was brought up with was that the sailor whom was to have the lashings inflicted was to make his own cat, this was because if you made a poor job of it the whip would do much more damage so it was in his best interests to make it as well as he possibly could. The Whip ended up being more than a metre long by the end of it so required a fair amount of space to swing.  

So the next time you are thinking of swinging a cat, leave puss alone!

Another one that I commonly hear misused is “approaching at a great speed of knots”

This is actually misquoted from the proper saying “approaching at a great rate of knots” which is from memory commonly used in lord Nelsons time when talking about ships approaching etc.

“Tow the line” which I can only imagine people are using to try to explain keeping up with a minimum level as people say things like “only do enough to tow the line”, where infact the general term really came from the old wooden sailing ships where the space between each pair of deck planks was filled with a packing material called caulking and then sealed with a mixture of pitch and tar. The result, from afar, was a series of parallel lines a half-foot or so apart, running the length of the deck. Once a week on Sunday, a warship's crew was ordered to fall in at quarters - that is, each group of men into which the crew was divided would line up in formation in a given area of the deck. To insure a neat alignment of each row, the Sailors were directed to stand with their toes just touching a particular seam. Another use for these seams; The cadet officers might be required to stand with their toes just touching a designated seam for a length of time as punishment for some minor infraction of discipline, such as talking or fidgeting at the wrong time. A tough captain might require them to stand there, not talking to anyone, for hours at a time. Hopefully, he would learn it was easier and more pleasant to conduct himself in the required manner rather than suffer the punishment.  Saving him from having to “toe the line”.


Another interesting one that is actually used correctly is "Dressed to the Nines" but its a pretty cool story so ill tell you anyway.
Having googled it, it seems that my story isnt even mentioned in what was supposedly the founding story of this one.  However nobody can decide on what the real meaning was.  So as this is my story,  ill tell it my way.  On the cruise ships we have a number of different uniforms, from boilersuits, to khakis, to red sea rig, to whites, all the way up to the Nines.  Which were basically a formal tux kind of thing.  So for us Dressed to the nines was the whole shebang.  Black shoes, black trousers, black cummerbund, black belt, ruffeled white shirt with gold buttons, white dinner jacket with gold buttons and a black bowtie with a white hat to top it off.... Dressed to the Nines we were! Not saying it came from cruise ships but certainly plausable that it may have come from a marine background.


Shit im starting to sound like a grumpy old sailor whining about the days of old.  GAH
Till Next time..