Duncan Johnson shares some marvellous memorabilia
Duncan (left), accompanied by a hairy Roger Day in 1970, about to embark from Gatwick Airport on a first trip to RNI) says: "It has been very remiss of me perhaps, but I hadn't realised you were featuring RNI as well on your website.

In 2016, John deBlok contacted us to name some of the people in the photos whose identity Duncan had unfortunately forgotten over the years. John has also pointed us to a collection of pictures on Martin van der Ven's website, taken the same day.

Duncan writes about how he was accompanied by Rodney Collins on his 'first gale-affected journey on the Mebo II'.

"Everyone on board was suffering and incapable of any movement except for the engineer (Klaus?) who was slowly moving about and Rodney and me who were standing on the deck trying to avoid the diesel fumes. The was no protecting fencing just a rail around the stern deck and we were sheltering behind the wheel house. Once we turned south and into the cross wind it got very rough, Rodney got greener and greener and said, "That's it, I can't hold on any longer" and with that he let go of the rail. He would have just slid off into the sea had I not managed to grab him by the collar with my left hand whilst holding the rail with the right.

With hindsight, it was all I could do to hang on. I managed to grapple him towards a large coil of rope and dump him in the middle of that in the hope that it wouldn't slide off the deck. A couple of hours later we were close to the English coast and the winds eased. Rodney didn't look 100% but he was on his feet and for a change he seemed incapable of speech! Life on the open waves!"

The Webmasters asked Rodney if he'd care to add anything to the story, but he says:

"Sadly the story is correct – every word of it!"

"The 'crew' on deck trying to get the transmitter working. (l to r) Andy Archer (partly hidden), Roger Day, Duncan Johnson, Peter Chicago, ?, captain Onnes, Koos van Duin, Dave Hawkins, Dirk Adrichem. The 2 people sitting remain unidentified. The Dutch engineer with the black beard, Koos van Duin, was driving the Mebo II during the crossing, when everyone else was in the green room."

Ex- Radio London engineers Russell Tollerfield and Dave Hawkins were visiting the Mebo to fix transmitter problems, as reported here.