A Sailor's Life Source: Wikiquote
Rank: 
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Split, Croatia
Hello again, everyone. I know that it has been nearly three months since my last post, but that is because we've spent a lot of time at sea. We broke our record from the other long underway time that we had. Back in October/November we were underway for 54 days, but after we left Bahrain in January, we were underway for a record breaking 59 days.
There have been numerous news articles online on various news sites and on the Navy Newsstand about everything that we've done during the past 3 months. Mainly our primary purpose was to protect and guard the Gulf of Aden from piracy. The nature of that narrow bit of water in that area makes it easy for small fishing boats in the Gulf to intercept and attack large slow moving merchant vessels.
Nearly every other day we would find out about a new contact that we needed to investigate. We would approach it and communicate with them as well as we could. We would often have to search their boat, and we would gather as much information about them as we could.
Most of our time there was spent patrolling the waters in that area, and we assisted and aided vessels in that area. It was very boring at times, but then there would be times when we would have to go chase down a small boat, and then we would have to man all the small arms gun mounts on the main deck. There were times when it was exciting, but nobody really wanted to have to shoot at small boat while we were out there.
After all the time underway, we made a very short stop in Salalah, Oman. There was very little to see there. I didn't have duty the first day that we were there, so we went out in town to see what we could find. The country of Oman is primarily desert. There were some mountains near the coastline, but aside from a few palm trees and expensive landscaping, there was very little green. We only were allowed to go to a few places where the bus would drop us off. The bus stopped at a Hilton, a shopping center, and a Crowne Royal Resort. We were able to find a nice restaurant and bar at the Crowne Royal Resort, and I was glad that we waited for the 3rd stop, because I heard that the Hilton got a little crazier than I usually prefer when I'm on liberty.
We spent very little time in Oman, and ended up getting underway the day after we pulled in. I don't think there was really very much to see there, but I read some things about frankinsense trees and the perfume from them. Apparently they are up in the mountains, so we didn't see any where we were.
After Oman, we made our way back to the Mediterranean, which is a welcome sight after patrolling the Gulf of Aden for so long. There are some pictures that I have of our ship passing through the Suez canal, which we've done 4 times this deployment altogether. I can email them to anyone that is interested.
Everyone on board has been excited about a couple of good port visits in the Mediterranean after having so little relaxation time in the last 3 months. We were very fortunate to stop in Split, Croatia, which is one of the largest cities on the Croatian coastline. Croatia is a small country directly to the east of Italy. The people here seem to like Americans quite a lot, and nearly everyone was very friendly with us. I think they must teach English in their schools, because nearly everyone had no problem understanding us in restaurants, bars, or other shops that we stopped at.
I had duty the first day that we pulled into port, so I wasn't able to go out in town that day. My chief also had some projects that he wanted us to work on while we were in port, so I spent a good portion of my day chipping and painting a deck that has suffered from a little too much exposure to seawater.
I was excited to get to go out on liberty in a port that we'd heard about a lot of good chances for some relaxation. The weather was a little chilly the first day, but then the next two days that I had liberty there were 20-30 knot winds in the harbor where we were moored. Fortunately the city was on the other side of a hill, and it wasn't nearly as windy there. It was a short 10 minute bus ride to get to the downtown area, and the harbor there is protected from the stronger winds.
The most significant landmark is a Roman palace that was built there a long time ago. All that remains of it is the walls, and a very ruined Catholic church in the center. It looks like they were restoring it, but there was still a lot of work to do.
We stopped for breakfast at a small restaurant, but apparently breakfast isn't very popular in Croatia. Most people drink tea and coffee for breakfast, but we got a basket of bread, which came with jelly and butter. I also ate an omelet, which I think they serve for the Americans that stop by.
After breakfast we walked along the wall of the old palace, and stopped at a lot of the stores along the street. There was a surprising number of lingerie stores, but the guys in the group didn't go in, while the girls shopped for a little while. There was a fish market that we stopped at, where all the fishermen were selling their recent catches of fish. There was an excellent restaurant right next to the fish market where we ate lunch at after we explored for a little while longer.
The restaurant was called Nostomos, and they had a delicious seafood platter. The exchange rate to convert dollars to Kuna was about 5.5, so $1 converted to about 5.5 Kuna. The fish platter was about 400 Kuna, which made it quite expensive. I think my meal cost as much as all the rest of the meals combined, but it was delicious. It had a variety of shellfish, some crawfish, and a whole fish.
The rest of that day and most of the next day we spent walking around town. There were a lot of caffe bar's where a lot of people get coffee, but they had a pretty good selection of alcohol for us to choose from. It had been so long since we'd had the opportunity to drink that we just felt like bar hopping. We ended up stopping in probably 6 or 7 small bars, and having a drink at each one. It sounds like a lot of drinking, but it was spread out throughout the day, and none of us was feeling too tipsy by the time we went back to the ship.
Inside the walls of the palace there were many very narrow winding alleyways. It was weird to walk down one of them, because when you would look down it, it wouldn't look like anything interesting was down there, but as soon as you started walking down it, you would find all kinds of shoe stores, lingerie stores, internet cafes, bars, and small restaurants.
While we were going around to various bars and enjoying the city, we ended up stopping at a place that had cheeseburgers. It wasn't like any cheeseburger that I've ever had before, but it was very good. It was mostly a large light roll that was cut open on one side so that the whole roll stayed intact. Then the meat wasn't too well done, which was good. There was still a little bit of pink in the meat, even though it was a pretty thin hamburger patty. The person at the counter asked me if I wanted mayonaisse, ketchup, pickles, and he even added some chili powder which added a little spice to it. The burger was good, and we left pretty quickly after that.
Unfortunately after about 10 minutes of walking around, I realized that I forgot my backpack there. It was amazing at how difficult it was to find the tiny cheeseburger shop again. I was almost certain of the area where it was, but it took us nearly 30 minutes of wandering around through the narrow alleyways of the city before we finally found it again. The store manager had kindly placed it behind the counter in case I came back for it. I didn't really have anything valuable in it, but I would prefer not to lose my backpack.
It was windy and cold in the evenings, and it seemed like the bus took a long time to show up at the spot where it dropped us off. There was a small shop with New York style pizza near the bus stop, so we ate a couple slices while we were there. I was also surprised to find a number of pastry stands like I have seen in France before. There were quite a few small shops with a lot of pastries available. It seems like a combination of French and Italian cultures have affected Croatia quite a bit.
My second duty day the weather got a little nicer, and I was able to do some maintenance to an antenna that has been neglected during the past few months. I had an evening watch on the quarterdeck, and it started to get windy again during that time. We have been in areas that have been so warm that very few people on the ship have very many really warm clothes, but I had some gloves that I had stashed in my luggage on the ship.
The weather was calm again the day that got underway, and now we are back out to sea again. It won't be long now until we return home, and I can't wait to see my beautiful fiance that has been waiting patiently for me all deployment. I will write about our final port visit in a week or so, and it should be pretty similar to our time in Croatia.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas At Sea
Out of the three deployments that I've been on, this has been the first one where I've missed Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is very difficult to miss the holidays, and everything that we do out here loses it's significance when we think about the memories that we are missing when we are not with our families and loved ones for the holidays. I thank you for all the encouragement that family members in the states give to their loved ones. It is always appreciated, and you have no idea how much it means.
We just not long ago left from Israel, which was an amazing port visit, and being able to be there at this time of year was a blessing. We have already been underway for a week since that port visit. Our minds have been heavy with Christmas, and everyone has thoughts of home. Christmas Eve was not really any different than any other day that we are underway.
Then we heard the news that we were going to have an underway replenishment (UNREP) on Christmas Day, and that we would have to work all day to replenish the ship with supplies and fuel. We moved our "holiday routine" day to the 26th of December, since we were doing this underway replenishment. When we do an UNREP, it makes for a lot of work for the crew, and it doesn't make for a very relaxing day. During this UNREP we took on 76 pallets of supplies, which means that we have to form a working party to empty each pallet to clear the decks above for the next pallets. We take on all the food that we need to provide for the crew for the next 3 or 4 weeks at sea. This means that we take on big boxes of meat that weigh 50-60 pounds each, heavy boxes of dry goods, bags of rice, flour, onions, potatoes. The light small boxes are few and far between.
We woke up on Christmas Day to the sounds of the UNREP detail being called away. They completed the re-fueling before we started with all the stores. This gave us some time to sit in the shop and wait until we started with the supplies. Everyone was in a pretty good mood, but I think that my Chief was a little too happy. He has 3 young children at home, and one of them is just entering their teenage years, so I know that he is feeling the pain of separation from being far from home during Christmas. He was a little too loud and obnoxious, and I must admit that he started to get on my nerves, so I went to another shop where I could wait for the supplies working party to start.
We started handling the supplies and stores a couple hours after the refueling started. Even the Chaplain was part of the working party, and I personally sat at the top of a ladder where you have to slide the boxes down slides that are built into the ladder. Some of those boxes of meat are really heavy, and then there are the boxes of milk, which weigh almost as much as the meat. I'm not complaining, and we are thankful that we have so much food available to eat, but it wasn't quite what I pictured doing during Christmas Day.
The best thing about having the UNREP on Christmas Day, was that we would be able to get any mail that friends and families had sent from home. Of the 76 pallets of supplies, 26 of those were mail, and everyone on the ship was hopeful that we would receive the packages that were sent as long ago as the beginning of November. We found out later that some of the mail had been misdirected to another ship, and that it took a while to catch up to us.
We were happy once all supplies were on the ship. It was a lot of work, but it was the mail that kept us the most hopeful and cheerful. All together we got 354 bags of mail delivered to the ship from the 26 pallets that we received. On a small ship like this there isn't really any space to store all that mail, so one of the passageways was used to store the mail. It was completely crammed full of bags and bags of mail. Our mailroom, which is attached to the same passageway, was also crammed full of mail (to the ceiling).
The SKs had a big job in front of them to get all the mail sorted. They called "Mail Call" over the ship's announcing system, and everyone showed up in a long line to get mail according to whatever division they belonged to. I showed up the first time, and picked up the mail that they had sorted. I wasn't sure if they had already sorted all of it, I didn't get the package from Chelle right away that I'd been looking forward to so much. Then they called "Mail Call Part 2" on the announcing system. The line was just as long as the first time, and people kept walking away with armloads of packages in their arms, but still the package that I was hoping for wasn't among the packages for my division.
They called "Mail Call Part 3" over the announcing system, and finally in this one, I got the package that I was hoping for. I think that altogether they called mail call about 5 or 6 times before they finally had all the mail sorted out. It was really an amazing amount of packages, and it is incredible how much it shows the love of everyone at home for all of us out here.
One other thing that meant a lot to the people on board was a bunch of boxes that we received as part of Operation Gratitude from a group of people out there that made Christmas boxes for every person on the ship. We had no idea who the people were that made all these boxes, but there were notes inside written by schoolchildren, adults, and a lot of people that just wanted to get together to provide Christmas packages to everyone on the ship. I don't know a lot about Operation Gratitude, but even after all the regular packages for everyone were sorted, there were still piles and piles of the Operation Gratitude boxes, which had to be sorted. I know that there were people that didn't get any boxes or anything from their families, and I know that these Operation Gratitude presents to all the people on board meant a lot to all the Sailors on this ship.
Personally, I was so happy to receive the package from my fiance, that I knew had been coming to the ship ever since the end of November. She packs boxes for me with such love and care, that I am moved to tears to see all the things that she sends me. I am so thankful for her love, and words cannot express my longing to marry her when I return from deployment. This is one of the longest and hardest deployments that I've had, but her love and support from home keeps me going.
After all of the disappointment at working on Christmas Day, and all the heavy boxes of meat, and all the hundreds of bags of mail, Christmas Day was all worth it once everyone on board received our packages from home.
Today (the 26th) is our observed Christmas Day, and it is very quiet on the ship today. I think there are a lot of people that are sleeping nearly all day, unless they have to get up for watch. I had watch last night from 2200 to 0200, and I slept all morning until about lunchtime. It felt so good to sleep in after the day that we had yesterday.
There is a joke around the ship that only the USS Mahan could move Christmas. It is funny to joke about the fact that the ship moved our observation of Christmas Day to the 26th. It was nice to get all our presents and packages on Christmas Day, but it was really strange that a ship would move Christmas Day.
Thank you for all your emails from home. I am always glad to hear from people that still follow my blog. Email me whenever you get the opportunity.
To all back in the States right now, Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 19, 2008
Haifa, Israel
The entire crew of the Mahan was happy to hear that we would get the opportunity to stop at Haifa, Israel for about 6 days. Haifa is north of Jerusalem and directly west of the Sea of Galilee. The ship had arranged for multiple tours and there were a lot of exciting things to do here. Personally, I was very pleased to hear that we were going to stop in Haifa, and I've always hoped that I'd have the opportunity to stop there.
We pulled into Haifa on a Sunday, and I had duty on that first day. It was a good day to have duty, since there weren't any tours or events happening on that day. I had a watch on the bridge wing manning a gun that is mounted there. Other than a few tug boats and the random merchant ship pulling in and out of port it is pretty quiet.
The watch did give me an excellent opportunity to observe the hillside of the city. From the harbor you can see a big hill covered with houses. The hill is Mount Carmel, which apparently is a very long hill, because we could still see it as we traveled south on our tours. A few of the famous things in Haifa are the Temple of Ba'b, the Tomb of Elija, and Mt. Carmel itself. The Temple was built to represent unity and peace between religions of the world. I didn't get to go see any of the famous things in Haifa, but the other places that I did go to were far more interesting.
Dead Sea and Masada
On the second day in port I had signed up to go on a tour of the Dead Sea and Masada. The tours were offered at a very reasonable rate, and the Navy paid for half of the total costs to go on the tours, which allowed us to get the tours at half the price that the Navy was already getting at a discounted rate.
The journey to the Dead Sea started at about 8am, which is when the bus left from Haifa. The weather here has been chilly but dry. The sun was shining and we pulled the shades in the bus halfway down the windows to shield our eyes. With as much time as we spend inside the ship, our eyes take a while to adjust to the brightness of the sun.
The bus traveled directly east to get to the Jordan river. We passed the Yizreel Valley, which is cluttered with fields of olive trees and other agriculture which I couldn't identify. There was even a corn field, but I only saw one of those. Once we got to the Jordan, we headed directly south toward the Dead Sea. The country is very hilly, and the bus went steeply down a number of hills as we made our way south. We passed by Jericho on our way, but it is not much more than a tiny city along the Jordan River. Somehow, whenever I think of Jericho, I normally think of a huge city with towering walls, but the city that I saw was not even close to the city of my imagination.
It took about 4 hours to get all the way to the Dead Sea, which is south of Jerusalem. The first stop was Masada, which is a very high plateau that towers over the Dead Sea. The plateau's history has been mostly undiscovered for nearly 2000 years until the 1960's when it was extensively excavated to determine it's history. In the time of Christ, King Herod built a palace on top of the plateau as a refuge against the Jews if they revolted against him.
Our guide took us to the top of the plateau which conveniently has a cable car which goes all the way to the top. There is a "snake" path that winds up the side of the plateau, but we didn't have the time to spend climbing it. There are a lot of ruins on top of the hill, and our guide took pride in telling us how the archaeologists determined that the people of Masada stored food and water on top of such a high place. King Herod was an excellent builder, and they had an extensive system of aqueducts that collected rainwater, so that they could store the water in large cisterns. King Herod built it to be able to withstand siege for many months and perhaps even years.
I got a lot of pictures from the top of the plateau, and you can see most of the Dead Sea from the top of it. There was a huge siege of Masada by the Romans in 72 AD, and from the top of the plateau you can see a line of rocks drawn to show the line of the Roman encampment that stretched all the way around the plateau. The Roman camps along the line were also outlined and could be clearly seen in the valley below.
We spent a couple hours on top of Masada, and observed the palace of King Herod. I personally think that there must be much more that they didn't show us, or that hasn't been discovered yet. What they have discovered is impressive, but I'm certain that there was more to the palace inside the plateau.
After exploring Masada and all the ruins, we went back to the bus, which took us to a place where we could eat a buffet meal and after eating we could swim in the Dead Sea. There were a lot of people that were there with other tour groups, and the Dead Sea is a big attraction because of it's health benefits. The minerals and salts are sold around the world in many skin creams and body care products.
I ate quickly, and changed in a large locker room. I went down to the Dead Sea and tested the water with my hand. The water of the Dead Sea is 10 times saltier than the Mediterranean, which makes it 35% salt. The water was a little cool, but once I got in, it felt pretty good. It felt pretty much like normal water at first, but once you get in to about your chest, your legs lift out from under you, and they float toward the surface. It's weird at first, and you feel like you have fight the water to stand back up again.
It's a really amazing experience. You can easily float on the surface of the water without moving or trying to swim at all. One person tried tasting the water, and said that it is really bitter and feels like it is burning your tongue. They warned us to not stay in the water more than about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes we went and washed off with fresh water before going back in the water for a little longer. The salty water feels slick on your skin, and any cuts on your body burn a lot from the salt.
After half an hour or so of floating around in the Dead Sea we were called out, and we had to go shower and get ready to get back on the bus. The Dead Sea was really amazing, and the tour of Masada was pretty interesting too.
Jerusalem
On the third day in port, I went on the tour to Jerusalem. This was the most popular tour of the 4 that were offered. All the tours were offered every day that we were in port, so anyone that was unable to go on a tour on a particular day would still be able to go on that tour on another day.
To get to Jerusalem we mainly followed the coastline of Israel until we got close to Jerusalem. Our guide was able to avoid heavy morning traffic in Tel-Aviv by going a little more inland on another highway. On our way to Jerusalem the tour guides stopped at a famous restaurant where the owner of the restaurant loves Elvis.
There were statues of Elvis and the entire restaurant was plastered with signs and pictures of Elvis. It was obvious that the tour guides reward the restaurant for catering to tourists, and it was pretty funny to find something like that in Israel.
One of the things that surprises me about the Israel landscape is how many hills there are. It seems like we were constantly climbing or descending hills. The highway must have taken a lot of construction to carve out a path through so many hills. Even in Jerusalem there is barely any flat valley area where you could grow crops. The Yizreel valley from the day before is one of the most fertile areas of Israel.
It took us about 3 hours to get to Jerusalem from Haifa. We started our tour of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives which overlooks most of the main city. I got a couple of good panoramic pictures from there. You could see the Muslim Dome of the Rock, and the Jewish Church of the Holy Sepluchre. The wailing wall is also visible from the Mount of Olives, but is hidden behind the Dome of the Rock temple.
The surprising thing about the view from the Mount of Olives was the huge cemetery of Jews that are buried on the side of the Mount of Olives. From the top of the mountain where we stood the entire side of the mountain was covered with gravestones of all the Jews that have been buried there in hopes of rising when Christ comes. I've never seen so many gravestones in one place.
You can also see the gate that Jesus entered into when he entered into Jerusalem. The gate is walled up, in a Muslim attempt to "prevent" Jesus from entering the city. There is also a Muslim burial area, which is right outside the wall. Another interesting thing is that the Muslims built a mosque (temple) next to any place where there is a Jewish church, and they always build the mosque to be a little bit higher than the Jewish church.
After looking at all of this from the Mount of Olives, we walked down the hill to the Garden of Gethsamane. There is a garden of very old olive trees that had huge trunks. There was a tree there that was planted just 50 years ago, and it looked nothing like the gnarled huge trunks of the ancient trees in the garden. The garden was right next to a church that was supposedly the place where Jesus first laid eyes on Jerusalem, and inside the church were a number of murals and depictions of Christ.
We took the bus up the hill from this point and drove around the wall to the gate of Jaffa. The tour guide had no other explanation for the name of the gate other than that the road that leads to the gate is also called Jaffa. Names for many places in Israel have stayed the same for thousands of years, and the guides weren't sure of the origins of the name. We walked through the gate and passed through a number of narrow streets crowded with tiny shops selling everything you could imagine. We felt a little rushed through this area, but the guides told us that it is easy to lose tourists among all the shops, and we found out later that some of those areas are dangerous for tourists.
The guides took us to a shop where we could buy souvenirs and all kinds of novelty items that tourists might like to buy. We spent at least half an hour there while nearly everyone purchased a lot of souvenirs. After that we walked through the Jewish quarter and Muslim quarter until we got to the wailing wall. The wailing wall is also called the western wall, and it is called that because it is the last of the original walls of Jerusalem that were destroyed. The new wall follows surrounds a different area, and the one original wall is considered a holy place in Jerusalem.
We had to go through a security checkpoint with metal detectors to get to the wailing wall, and to go up to the wall your head must be covered. Women are not allowed to go up to the wall, and they have a section of the wall that they may go to. We were allowed to walk up to it, and at one place there was a clear glass plate on the ground where they excavated down to the original base of the wall which is many feet below the level of the ground now. There were many Jews saying prayers toward the wall, and there are thousands of notes to God stuffed into the cracks of the wall. The tour guide told us that once a year the notes are collected and buried. There were so many that it looked like the mortar of the wall until you get up next to it and you see that it is thousands of tiny folded bits of paper.
We went back to the tour bus after that and made a short stop at the church of the Virgin Mary, and nearby also was the tomb of King David and the site of the Lord's Supper. We made hurried stops at each of these, because the tour guides were supposed to have us out of the city before dark. The room of the Lord's Supper was not very impressive, but somehow I think that the real upper room would have been even less impressive than the place we visited. It is hard to know for sure where all of the events in the Bible took place, but the places that we visited are what has been passed down through the generations.
The ride back to Jerusalem was uneventful, and nearly everyone slept all the way back to Haifa. The biggest impression that I got of Jerusalem is how much conflict there is there. The guide mentioned how the archaeologists want to do further excavation to find more of the ancient ruins of Jerusalem that lay beneath the level of the streets, but the Muslims would create much conflict and say that the Jews are trying to destroy the Muslim temple if they tried to do any excavation. It seems like Jerusalem teeters on the brink of conflict constantly, but that is the curse of this part of the world. The conflict will continue until Christ comes again and resolves the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims.
Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee
I had duty on the fourth day in port, but the fifth day I got to go on the tour to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. The tour guide that we had was a very nice lady who has been giving tours for a long time. She even read her Bible to us when we reached certain areas that the Bible mentions. We left at about 8am, like we did with the other tours, and we went directly East toward Nazareth.
Nazareth is only about 30 minutes away from Haifa, and it didn't take us long to get there. The city of Nazareth is much bigger now than it was during Jesus time. Our guide said that in the time of Jesus there were probably only 10 houses, and the town would have been very insignificant compared to any other towns around there. There is a very large church built over the site where Mary and Joseph's house stood. There is an actual small stone hut carved out of the side of the mountain in the center of the church which is supposedly the actual site of where they lived. There was a church service there when we walked in, and surprisingly the sermon was in English. We listened for a bit, but then moved on.
From Nazareth we took the bus to the Sea of Galilee where we visited a number of sites where Jesus taught. It is also very likely the same area where Jesus blessed the loaves and fish. He also probably called to the disciples in the fishing boat from there, and told them to cast their nets to the other side of the boat. The church of the Beatitudes is up on top of a nearby hill, and there is a lot of excavation where the site of Peter's house and the surrounding village and synagogue were.
Going to the Sea of Galilee was probably the most moving part of all of the tours that I went on. It boggles the mind to think of how Jesus walked and taught in the same places where we were standing. I walked away from the group a little to just sit and look out over the Sea of Galilee to think about everything that happened there. It gives a new meaning to everything that you read in the Bible and all the stories that are there that talk about the places where we were standing.
After the visit to the Sea of Galilee, we went down to the southern side of the sea to where the Jordan river exits the sea. The Chaplain was with us, and he performed baptisms on 11 people that requested to be baptized in the Jordan River. It was pretty moving to watch each person as they were baptized. There was one last souvenir shop before we got back on the bus to go back to Haifa, but there was much to think about as we rode back to the ship one last time.
...... So that was everything that I got to see in Israel. I apologize for how long this post is, but there is so much to write about. I wish that we could have been here even longer to spend more time in Jerusalem and learn more about the city. From about 2000 to 2006 there has been almost no tourism in Israel because of conflict, and I'm sure that conflict will break out again. We have been very fortunate to be able to visit Israel, and I've always hoped that we'd be able to stop there someday.
Email me if you have any comments about everything that I wrote here. I may have made some minor errors in my recollection of facts. We're over the halfway point of deployment now, and getting closer every day to returning home.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Hello, everyone! It's been a little over a year since my last post on here, and I'm sorry for that. It has been a very crazy and educational year. My biggest reason for not spending as much time posting on this blog has been because I have a special woman in my life. I spend a large portion of my time communicating with her, and we are engaged to be married on May 16th, 2009. If you'd like to visit a page that we made for our wedding, you can visit www.isaacandchelle.com
So, I have a feeling that this will be a long post, since I will try to catch everyone up on everything that has happened during the past year. After my last post, the Mahan went to dry dock, which was a new experience for me. The ship is 10 years old now, and every 10 years a ship is put into dry dock to repaint the hull, replace the shafts, replace the propellers, and whatever else has to be accomplished. It was very strange seeing the ship up out of the water, but a lot of things were changed, upgraded, refurbished, and repainted. The ship came out of dry dock in March of this year, and I watched while the propellers went below the water once more for another 10 years.
The Mahan is currently on deployment, which started back in September. This deployment has been very unlike the past two deployments that I've been on. So far we have only had three port visits, and the deployment is nearly halfway over. The first visit was to Rota, Spain, which was a stop for less than a day to refuel.
The second visit was to Palma, Spain, which was more like the port visits that I'm accustomed to from my past deployments. Palma is a city on an island off the coast of Spain, and there was a castle, which I had to explore up on a hill near the city. The city had a huge cathedral, which I never actually ended up going inside, but I got plenty of pictures from the outside. Our port visit there was only for about 4 days, and it was very enjoyable.
The third port visit that we've had was to Bahrain, which is near Iraq and Afganistan and all those countries that you hear about on the news. There was a Navy Exchange there, and since it was a couple of months into deployment when we stopped there, many people needed to get basic necessities, like soap, shaving cream, razors, and other basic necessities. My experience in Bahrain wasn't quite as good as other countries that are more friendly toward us. When we went to the city, you can hear the Muslim prayers blaring over the city at various times during the day. There were many Muslims walking around the city in the traditional religious robes, and honestly, we didn't feel very comfortable walking around the city. We stopped in a few shops and stores to see what we could buy, but headed back to base after a only a few hours.
This deployment has been spent patrolling many of the areas in the Middle East, and we've been involved in some of the events that you hear on the news from this area. I can't really give out any details, but this has definitely a very different deployment from my past deployments. Nobody should worry though. There is no threat to the ship, or the sailors on the ship, but we've spent a lot of time running around this area.
The biggest reason though that I'm writing this post is because of a story that happened just a couple days ago, and Chelle definitely wanted me to write about it. For any of you that used to read my blog ona regular basis over the past couple of years, you know that I've been working on my Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist (ESWS - pronounced ee-swahs) qualification for nearly the entire time that I've been stationed on this ship.
The ESWS qualification requires a person to have a general overall knowledge of almost every area of the ship. You have to know things like, our capabilities for gun and missile systems, ranges and types of our radars, and capabilites of our engines and generators. Those are the biggest things that you need to know, but you also need to know about how the Navy supply system works, like how we get parts, food, and mail, and how that whole system works. We also have to have basic knowledge of all the basic seamanship things, like what a bollard, cleat, chock, monkey's fist, or bitts are. You have to know the size, weight, length of chain, and type of anchors that we have. You have to know what kind of helicopters we can land and what all the markings on the flight deck mean. There is a huge amount of information covering ever part of the ship, and you have to answer all kinds of questions for all that information in front of a 1st class oral board, and then you have to get quizzed by a Chief's oral board examination.
Over the past couple of months that we've been out here, I've been studying and preparing to complete my ESWS qualification. I did pretty well on the 1st class board, even though I had to look up some supply questions, and I did ok on the Chief's board. The chief that quizzed me for my engineering board wasn't convinced that I knew enough about engineering, so I ended up going and getting training on a number of engineering areas again. Then I went back to that chief and he quizzed me on the areas that he wanted to make sure that I have a good understanding of. I completed all of the oral boards a week or so ago, but the interesting story that I wanted to tell everyone was the day that I got my ESWS pin, and was allowed to start wearing it.
So on the morning that I was supposed to get my ESWS pin. There is a tradition of dipping the ESWS pin in salt water, or splashing salt water on the chest of the person receiving the pin. I had seen this done in the past, and I wanted to have it done for my own pinning ceremony. The ceremony itself wasn't until about 1500 that afternoon, but I wanted to be ready for it. So we were trying to figure out an easy way to get seawater. Of course we're floating in a gigantic puddle of it, and the most logical method to get it would be to dip the bucket in the ocean. I think we should have just done that right from the start, but the idea occurred to us to get some saltwater from the firemain system on the ship.The firemain is used to fight fires on the ship. It is saltwater, and pretty much comes straight out of the ocean. Of course, the fish are filtered out, and any algae or other debris that we might pick up from the ocean. There is a firemain valve in the passageway right outside our shop that we polish and clean every day. We've been pretty proud of how clean and shiny our passageway has been lately, especially since all the smokers walk though our passageway in order to get to the smoke deck. There is generally a lot of dirt and ash that is tracked in from the smokers or anyone else that works topside.
So we figured that we would be able to get clean clear saltwater from the firemain, right? WRONG! There is a Y gate valve on the main firemain valve to allow for two hoses to be hooked up to the main valve. We closed both outlets of the Y gate, and began to barely open the main valve. We could hear a little bit of a rushing sound as the valve began to open. We checked the Y gate to see if we had any saltwater yet, but there was nothing. We opened the firemain valve just a little bit more and heard more sounds of pressure being released. We tried cracking one of the Y gate openings just a little bit and SPLAT! A bit pile of mud sprayed all over the deck, our coveralls, and the bulkheads. It was like that silt that collects in the bottom of ponds and water tanks. It was really nasty stuff.
We spent a good part of the morning after that cleaning the bulkheads and deck. It was a big mess, and we got asked about a thousand times about what happened from all the smokers that were going outside for their morning smoke. It was rather embarrassing, but we learned something about the firemain. We'll probably flush out that valve sometime to get all that silt out of there, but we were pretty surprised when it splattered mud all over the passageway.
So after the firemain incident, we recovered some nice clean seawater from the ocean, which worked out much better.
Later in the day we had the actual ceremony for the ESWS pinning. The CO said a few words, and asked me to challenge someone else in my division to get their ESWS pin during this deployment too. I challenged another ET3 that is really close to making ET2, and I think that he'll make a lot of progress toward getting it. I hope that he completes it, but I know that it is a lot of information to absorb. Our whole division was up on the bridge during the pinning ceremony and we got a few pictures. I'm having trouble uploading pictures to Flickr or Blogger, but I can send anyone pictures via email, if they would like to see them.
So we will continue floating along, patrolling the ocean. I will make a post about our next port visit, which I am pretty excited about. It's a place that I've always wanted to go, and was hoping to go to before I leave this ship.
I check my email often, and I would love to hear from anyone that enjoyed this post. I'm not sure how many people still get the subscription emails, but I hope to hear from you, if you do.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
A long rest...
Yes, I took a long rest from posting on my blog. I'd been posting pretty faithfully for the past 3 and a half years, but once I got to the end of the last deployment, I had to take a break.
Since July when I posted about going home for the summer for a couple of weeks, we have gone on a couple little excursions down to Mayport or up to Annapolis. The ship has been busy, and we wish that we could get more time in port.
We went down to the south Florida area for a big exercise with a number of other ship's and submarines. During last deployment the Mahan got an award called the "Bloodhound" award, and we are able to fly a special white flag with a bloodhound on it that very few ships get to fly. Because we got that award, we were selected to go down to the Carribean for a couple of weeks to participate in an exercise where we play war games with a number of other submarines. We were mostly successful at winning the war against the submarines, but we got "shot" at a couple of times by the "enemy" too. More than once we went weaving through the water as we simulated an emergency evasion of a torpedo in the water.
Our trip up to Annapolis was merely for a Navy game that we were selected to be at. Most of the ship would have preferred to stay in Norfolk, and I know that I had better things to do. I don't usually follow or get too excited about sports, so football isn't all that amazing to me. We were there for a weekend and then returned to Norfolk.
One of the biggest reasons that I'm writing this post though is because I was selected to go on a special assignment with another ship. This particular ship is not a regular Navy ship. It is manned by civilians, and it is a United States Naval Ship (USNS) instead of a regular USS ship like the Mahan. The ship is called the USNS Prevail, and it is a Training Support Vessel. It was something else once upon a time, but the Navy recently converted it to help support boarding operations. Basically what this ship does is toprovide a boarding platform for other ships. We will have multiple boarding teams come on board so that they can practice boarding unfamiliar vessels.
Originally, I was selected to come on board this ship so that I could assist them with their communications equipment that provides them with Internet and phone lines. There is a civilian on board that is capable of configuring all of the communications systems on board, but they wanted me here so that I could support the civilian with any problems that may happen while we are underway.
Right now we are underway near the southern US coast, and we will soon begin operations with many other ships that are out here to help with the boarding exercises that everyone is participating in. I will pretty much be staying out of the way while actual boarding teams are on the ship, and if I got in their way, they would probably handcuff me and search me. They have to look for possible "intelligence" that the ship has, and if you get in their way, they have to search you. If it were a real situation where you were actually searching an enemy vessel for intelligence, then I'm sure that they would go into every space, but here there are certain off-limits areas. They can only search the allowed areas, since we are a friendly ship, and the captain wouldn't appreciate the boarding team bagging up all of his belongings in his stateroom. :)
So far we haven't had any major problems with the Internet communications gear, and my job has been pretty quiet. Since I am the only ET on board though, and the Captain rarely actually has a technician on board, he asked me to go through the rest of the communications gear and perform any alignments or diagnose any equipment problems that he might have. So over the past couple of days, I've been going through the maintenance cards that he has on board for all the equipment and determining what I'll be able to work on. This coming week I will spend plenty of time doing alignments and whatever work I can do with the test equipment and tools that are on board.
So that's my new adventure. I will try to enjoy this time that I have on a new and different ship, but in all honesty I would rather be back in Norfolk enjoying the apartment that I need to add furniture to. I guess I that I haven't probably ever mentioned that before, but yes, I got an apartment after this past deployment. Myself and another ET share the rent, and I have enjoyed just having a place of my own. I have a couch and a bed and a couple of tables, but other than that it is pretty empty.
I hope that the people that used to get this blog's posts haven't completely forgotten about me, but I'm still around. My current email address on this ship is spenceri@prevail.navy.mil That email address will only work for the next couple of weeks that I am on this ship, but I would love to get some email from people that I have not heard from in a long time.
Purpose: This website is for the purpose of communicating with friends and family that wish to stay up to date with how I am doing and what life is like in the Navy. National security is an active concern of the author of this website, and implicit effort is made to post nothing here that will compromise national security in any way.