Quick & Dirty Update

I have returned from deployment! We are safe and back at our homeport of Pearl Harbor. Zach has been successfully delivered to Honolulu as well as our car and our household items. We have moved into a twin house in a military neighborhood. We are busily unpacking and getting to know the area. The weather is fine and we enjoyed Christmas Eve with the Hawai’i Bowl at Aloha Stadium.

Mahalo (see what I did there!?) for all the support throughout the last year or so. We now face a challenge on the home front of settling into a new city, a new home, new friends, reconnecting with each other, and job searching for Zach.

Merry Christmas!

Nightmare Before Christmas

I want you to think of time when you and a group of friends had a bright idea and when discussing it, it was nothing but ‘that sounds totally awesome’ and ‘it’s gonna be epic!’ and ‘there is no way this could go wrong’. Maybe you had a little doubt, but everyone else seemed pretty gung ho about it so you brush your questions under the rug. Now, does the term hindsight is 20/20 come to mind? Yes, this pretty much sums up a naval warship transiting the Panama Canal through the evening/night hours.

Let me just draw a picture for you to help you fill in some blanks. On a good day the estimated time through the canal is 13 hours. Extra watches have to be manned through the entire transit which means, yay no sleep! That’s’ not something foreign to us, but its blazing outside and add the fact that the ship is unable to dump any waste and water production has been reduced. Yes my friends, this means no showers and no working toilets. Extra exhaustion is served up knowing the end of the transit awaits fuel and supply on load. But there is some relief, at least we have a condensed time line and it will be over soon enough.

Wrong! Let’s begin with warship+Panama Canal. This equals SLOWWWW. We have little margin for error on either side of the ship so extra caution is taken.  Slow and steady is the name of the game. We had several canal employees on board our ship including a pilot, as to handle and monitor our travel.

Panama Canal+evening/nighttime. This adds a complexity that proved more risky than anticipated, I believe. Dude, its dark….yes there are lights, but nothing beats good ol’ Mr. Sunshine! The Chafee can now remember the transit with a nice big gouge on the side of the ship...game over for the night. The Canal pilot on board stopped our transit and we were to spend the night in a man-made lake (a lake! I think it will be the first and last time I will be in a lake on a US Naval vessel…) and complete our passage in the morning.

Ok, so we can sleep! Immediately after that thought however, comes the realization that we still have reduced water production.  No showers are to be had and the toilets will still be down. After a sweaty evening and plenty of hydration, this counters the excitement for a night’s sleep.

We get a bit of a late start in the morning, but everything seems to be going smoothly. It’s still hot and everyone has a job to do, but there is plenty of time for photo ops and absorbing the sight and experience. We didn’t gain much ground last night, so the day is long and draining. Lingering in our minds is the fact that a lot of work is to be done after we pull in pier side which ends up being after dinner.

It’s dark and we’re tired, but muster the motivation to get fuel, supplies, to offload trash, and ‘fix’ the side of the boat. Moral is surprisingly high. We’re hot and we are weary, but we push through on-loading several pallets of supplies, thousands of gallons of fuel, and off-loading hundreds of pounds of trash. It amazes me the amount of enthusiasm and positive energy, but our CO and XO are right beside us sweating, hauling, and passing supplies, so that has a lot to do with it I am sure. We’ve also got a sound system and are able to score our activity with music.

It’s high time we get underway and set the sea and anchor detail. But we are delayed…Shocker… For over an hour we standby, not knowing when we will be given permission to leave. Once we are given the ok to leave, and lines are put away its midnight. It has been a very long few days and all anyone can think about is a cold shower; we’ve earned them! The shower line is long, but well worth the wait. Oh, happy day, soap and water!

Though from the beginning it was one big cluster, it was definitely one of the most memorable experiences and I would do it again. I got some great photos and I likely never would have seen the canal at any other point in my life. Trying times has brought us all together and this evolution was one of the more frustrating ones of our deployment.

We are a few days closer to a life far from deployment! We are hanging in there and will be home soon enough!

NavySpeak: Deck; floor. I dropped my pen on the deck!

That Crank Life Though

It’s taken me a while, and this probably isn’t one of the uplifting things I have learned about the Navy, but I have learned that it’s better to have limited expectations entering into your routine. Flexibility (aka, try not to get your hopes up) is the key for smooth sailing around here. Plans are always changing and things are never what you expect them to be whether good or bad.

For the past couple of months I had been temporarily assigned to work in the kitchen and berthings as my primary duty. Instead of working with Tomahawks in my own work center, I was pulled to help in the galley. I prepped and served food, cleaned living spaces, and dropped off/picked up the crew’s laundry. It’s a three month period that everyone has the privilege of doing in their first year or so of arriving to their first ship. The term used for this cranking, so that made me a crank.

My days consisted of a 0430 wake up to have breakfast ready by 0600. After clean up in the kitchen, I would head to the living spaces where I cleaned and picked up or dropped off laundry depending on what day of the week it was. That would roll right into getting lunch ready and then before I knew it dinner was beckoning. Between cleaning, prepping, and serving, my days were pretty packed servicing the rest of the crew. Days were long, full, and agitating at times. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I joined or the purpose I thought I would fulfill.

I worked hard and tried to have a good attitude. I made some friends while I was there and even was recognized with a letter of appreciation. My work there was done, and I was very much looking forward to one last liberty port without having to crank and in beautiful Curacao not to mention! We were only going to be there a day, but it was just what I thought I needed to refresh my body and mind.

Low and behold I was put in to the duty section that held down duty that day… womp, womp. There was work to be done and a ship to take care of. I didn’t get time to relax away from the ship.

Though I was unable to get out and enjoy the sights, I was being thought of. I had friends buy souvenirs and food for me as they returned to the ship after their day of rest. I was also able to get some speedy wifi and surf the net a little. It’s amazing how cheerful these small things made me, but considering life deployed I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

We’re back underway with our homecoming in the double digits! We are all very anxious and appreciate our loved ones support. We will see you soon!