Eurosiege 85 as I remember it. I was on air on the first Thursday of August 1985 I was doing the Caroline breakfast show when this very smart boat called The Dioptric Surveyor came past and circled us very close we all went out on deck and gave them a wave, they did not wave back I seem to remember, then the boat left us and headed out in the direction of the Kent coast. We saw no more of the spy boat (as we later called it) that day.
On the Friday again I was on air at around 9ish the Dioptric surveyor returned and circled us very closely, almost coming along side, still at this stage we had no idea what she was up to, but we did make it very clear we were a register Panamanian ship in international waters, and we were breaking no laws.
Still no communications from them. On the Friday it seemed it was Caroline they were more interested in rather than the Laser 558 ship a mile and a half away.
When on the Friday evening they did not leave and just hung around the Ross we started to think Hello something's up here, also thought if they were still around on the Saturday morning that could be fun as we knew we were to get a fuel boat out from Europe, and at the weekends in the summer we had sight seeing boats out from Essex and Kent.
Saturday morning came as did Caroline's European tender, our tender just came alongside moored up and off loaded a load of fuel, food and water, the Dioptric Surveyor crew tried at this stage to get pictures but needless to say we made it hard for them to do this with canvas covers over fuel pipes etc. at around the same time this was going on we had a sight seeing boat come out from Essex, they went round the blind side off the Ross from the spy boat and then off loaded some goodies all good fun.
Later that day the Dioptric Surveyor made its first trip over to the Laser ship Communicator, then it just anchored between the 2 of us.
That first Sunday the Spy boat was there brought more sight seeing boats out from the UK and the poor old spy boat did not know what ship to concentrate on. As it was we did feel a bit sorry for them we had all these people coming out to us with goodies, the Sunday papers etc, and I don't thing once anybody put anything aboard the spy boat that weekend.
It was not till Monday around the 12th August 1985 at lunchtime we found out what was really going on. I was looking for news items for the Caroline 1pm news and on the BBC TV teletext I saw a headline 'Caroline and Laser watch out' It stated the UK government were out to close our supply lines and the Technology Minister Geoffrey Pattie had also Described us as 'Potential Killers that must be removed'.What had happened was the 2 stations had become so popular local stations were loosing listeners to us and were best not pleased and wanted action taken.
Anyboat that did come from the UK were contacted by the spy boat and warned if they supplied us they could face an unlimited fine or 2 year's imprisonment. I have to tell you now not ONE boat that came out to us turned back.
We did have some fun with the DTI on the Dioptric Surveyor knowing they were listening all the time to us, when the weather got a little choppy and watching there boat (which was a lot smaller than the 2 Radio ships) rolling around we did mention greasy food a lot, then we'd see the men from the ministry hanging over the side throwing up …poor souls

The Government boat also did a really strange thing every Friday around 6.30AM it would go into Harwich about 16 miles away to stock up it would be gone nearly all day so anything we needed to get out in a hurry from the UK we would get out on a Friday morning, another time they followed a boat that came with some press people on all the way back to Whitstable, and while they were doing that we did a quick DJ change over from the UK.

Other things we used to do was start our main ships engine if they tried to come to near to us in there rubber dingy, we had a long anchor chain down so would run the ship around on that so they could not get too close, they also tried to measure how much fuel we had on board by seeing how low/high we were in the water so we just pumped it around different tanks and some we did not use we filled with salt water, then one day half emptied them the next fill it up a bit etc, so they gave up on that.

We were lucky on the Ross as most of our supplies were coming from Europe at this time so Eurosiege had no affect on us apart from we must have had about £10 million of free advertising for the station as each day we were on the national news/local news, national newspapers the whole lot and all thanks to the British government, and we noticed the mail increased 20 even 30 fold after this, and lots of people saying blimmy thought you lot went off air years ago welcome back!
Unfortunately Laser's supplies, or most of them were coming from the UK and after a while the Spy boat realised this and started giving them a hard time and almost gave up on trying to get Caroline off air.
On the 6th November Laser sailed into Harwich it's fuel and other supplies low and escorted by the newer bigger spy boat and a former sister ship to the communicator The Gardline Tracker,
Lasers days were over.
Eurosiege 85 went on for about another week after this then once again Caroline was left all alone in the North Sea.
In closing I think anyone who was out on Caroline during those 3 months would say 'it was so much fun and we all got such a big lift with all the support we kept getting'..We were not going to roll over and surrender..

My time on the Mi Amigo

I first went out to the Mi Amigo in December 1977 with Albert Hood on one of his weekly sight seeing trips to the ship.
My first thoughts about the ship was it did look a bit rusty but seemed very stable with that almost 200 feet of radio mast at the front of the ship.
On that first trip I did not stay just going out to have a look, but I was hooked at that point thinking I want to work on the old girl at some stage.
I went out sight seeing on several occasions in 1978, finally going out with Albert to have a look at the ships generators in autumn of that year and staying on the ship.
That winter of 1978/79 the station was off air, but things on board at first were not too bad, we had one of the ships small generators running 24 hourd a day, and plenty of food. Water was the only thing we had to watch what we used.
That first trip I was on board for about 13 weeks, on board at the time was Tony Alan, Peter Chicago, Roger Matthews and Busby (Richard Thompson)
Early January 1979 I came ashore, and my time aboard the Mi Amigo almost came to an end then as mid Jan the ship was abandoned and almost sank in an Easterly Gale.
Peter Chicago managed to get a boat to go out to the Mi Amigo the next morning and got aboard before she was boarded a then could have been towed away by the authorities. Peter was on his own for over 24 hours when the likes of Mike Barrington, Tony Alan, Myself, and some other helpers went out with some new pumps for the ship.
The ship was in darkness when we got along side but she did seem to be riding the waves ok. Once onboard we set to work to get one of the ships generators running once again and start pumping the water out.
Water had come in from several leaks in the ships plates around the engine room at the stern of the ship. Some of us fixed them using concrete while the others on the ship set about clearing the cabins and the record libery and English studio below decks which had flooded to about half way up the starboard side. What made the mess worse was the water that seeped through the whole ship was mixed with oil and diesel.
After about 12 hours or so we had pumped the whole ship as dry as we could and from then on we set about washing all the records in fresh water that had been submerged in the oil etc, There was about 3000 of them that needed cleaning I remember Tony Alan did most of that, the rest of us started cleaning and re painting the cabins, record libery and the English Studio.
Trouble was at this time we had very little diesel, water or food on board, and only power for cooking, so about 2 hours a day, rest of the time the ship had no electric power. Our night lighting was with Hurricane lamps, they tended to go out well the deck ones did in storms, remember we are talking about February and March 1979 here and we did have some very bad weather at that time, around Valentines day we had one very bad North Easterly storm 10 to 11, but the ship held out ok, taking on water again but very little I'm glad to say.
Early April 1979 the weather was very good so we got to work on chipping and painting the deck housing and side of the ship.
We had been told to get the ship ready to go back on air around Easter 1979. Good Friday was very calm, but nothing came out to us and much the same on the Saturday, which I remember as being so calm 2 of us even went in for a swim. We had dinner that evening about 7 and we thought nothings going to happen this Easter now.
Then around 8ish we heard a ships hooter, we went out on deck and a rather large boat was coming along side, there I noticed Tom Hardy and Peter Chicago. Once Chicago came on Board he announced to us we were going back on air in the morning at 10am.
We just about had One good working Generator in the engine room which would run the 10kw TX but not the 50kw, and the Cummings on the back deck which was not one of the ships most reliable generators but would with a kick and shove some times work and that would power the 50kw ok.
Peters first attempt to put the TX on ended in a flash and bang and Peter saying 'Oh Bugger'. One cup of tea and a cake later and a little more cleaning inside the transmitter and we were back on air with Tony playing Fool if you think it's over.
That summer and autumn of 1979 things got better all the time on the ship with the Dutch service daytime and English service night time and in between the religious recorded shows which brought in a lot of money.
We had loads of food especially chickens that year as one of the owners of the Dutch service had a chicken factory.
There was talk late 1979 of the all day English service starting up again once the Man generators had been repaired, that was going to happen around March/April 1980 but as we know it was not to be. March 1980 and the old girl could hold out no more and sank just off the Long Sands in the North Sea.