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!