THE GODS were good to the men and women of Task Force Orion as they began their four months in the Mediterranean.

The waters of Biscay were unseasonably calm as the five-strong task group headed for Lisbon, then on into the Middle Sea.

Four minehunters – Sandowns Walney and Shoreham and Hunts Atherstone and Hurworth – form the core of the Orion group, bolstered by new landing support ship RFA Cardigan Bay, the staff of 1st Mine Counter-Measures Squadron, and the frogmen of Fleet Diving Unit 2.

The group formed up off Plymouth initially to hone their collective skills, including practising RAS-ing (Replenishment At Sea) and mine warfare drills.

The former was conducted courtesy of small fleet tanker RFA Black Rover, which was also hosting reservists from Plymouth RNR unit HMS Vivid, brushing up on force protection duties before heading to the Gulf to join RFA Sir Bedivere.

Reservists are being deployed to ease the burden on full-time sailors visiting overseas ports by carrying out guard and other protective duties.

British personnel protected by the Vivid team should be in safe hands as the reservists proved particularly keen shots.

With the Vivid reservists deposited safely back on land, and the FOSTies happy the minehunters knew how to RAS, the task force bade farewell to Devonian shores in glorious spring weather... glorious weather which surprisingly persisted as they crossed Biscay bound for their first port of call, Lisbon, for a brief pit stop, before moving on to Gibraltar.

The force is led by Cdr Chris Davies, Commanding Officer of MCM1, and his staff, who have set up shop aboard Cardigan Bay.

This is the first time one of the RFA’s new amphibious ships has been used as a command/flag/mother ship; the four Bays were originally designed to support a Royal Marines landing operation.

Fleet Headquarters are keen to know what these large ships are capable of – and whether they can support a minehunting force in the long run.

Cardigan Bay also serves as the floating base for the specialist very shallow water divers of Fleet Diving Unit 2, who work hand-in-hand with mine warfare forces to clear underwater explosives in advance of an amphibious assault.

To make their task easier, the FDU2 team has taken a gizmo with it to the Mediterranean: REMUS (Remote Environment Monitoring UnitS), a torpedo-shaped portable sonar which scours the seabed for suspicious objects, then returns to a mother ship where the data it has collected can be downloaded on to computer for mine warfare experts to analyse.

After relatively short stops in Gibraltar and Augusta, Sicily, the Orion deployment began in earnest in Patras in western Greece.

Ahead of Exercise Ariadne, a mine hunt for NATO forces in the Peloponnese run by the Hellenic Navy, there was some very welcome downtime, including barbecues on the sweep deck as the sun dipped over the Mediterranean horizon.