France-Bound

On Tuesday, we went through the Panama Canal. It was a very cool experience. You drive into this really narrow area (see picture) and a little row boat rows out to you and tosses up a line. You hook one up on either side and these locomotives on tracks pull you along into the lock, which fills up with water once the doors close behind you. You can see the guys in the row boat and the trains in the picture on the right. It's nerve-wracking, because you have no control over the process once you're in the canal. It's about 45 miles long, and they make warships do it at night, so we had special stations manned up from about 5 p.m. until about 4 a.m., making it a trying day for the crew. As a reward, they allowed people to sleep in an extra hour, until 7 a.m. Great.

Now that we're in the Atlantic, the temperature has cooled considerably-- at least 20 degrees difference. The reason is that the seawater temperature is much cooler, so it makes it much easier when out at sea. We're currently transiting to our next port of Martinique, where we should get a night of liberty to go out in town and see it. Martinique is still a french colony, so when filling out the diplomatic clearances (a job that falls on me) to pull into the ports, we were corresponding with France-- a very odd thing, considering we will be in the carribean.

It's been a long week for me. Earlier this week, I was forced to send one of my sailors to Captain's mast-- the second sailor in 2 weeks. At sea, Captains of warships are given broad powers, and one of those powers includes punishing sailors for a given offense. He can dock pay, demote them, put them on restriction (meaning they cannot leave the ship) and even put them on bread and water for ten days (though I've never seen that happen). The term "Captain's Mast" dates back to the old British navy (as many of our traditions do) where the Captain of a ship would hold court in front of the mast and pass judgement in front of the whole crew as a type of deterrent. The term is still used today, though it rarely happens that way. I wrote this sailor up for a pattern of misconduct and disobeying a lawful order. While I knew that he wouldn't end up getting an official punishment and that it would be pushed back down to my level, I did it to scare him straight. It's a very formal process, and one that every sailor dreads. Officers can't be sent to Captain's Mast-- if their offense is bad enough, they'll be sent to Admiral's Mast... not something that you ever want to happen, as it will essentially be a career-ender. Sailors can recover, though it stays on their record for a few years.

As we transit closer and closer to South America, our job will pick up a lot more. In a little more than two weeks, we will begin our main mission-- exercises with foreign navies and working with them to gain greater interoperability. Also, port calls will begin, and the fun part of deployment will start. For now, we're just in a daily groove and a routine every day, which is nice in some respects, but the accelerated life of military exercises and port calls will be a welcome change.

It is so freaking hot

I can’t believe how hot it is around here. We’re steaming south along the coast of Panama, getting ready to do our Panama Canal transit tomorrow. As we get closer and closer to the equator, the heat is increasing into the high 90s during the day. And this is out at sea—I can’t imagine what it’s like on land. It’s so hot that we’re having to shut equipment down from overheating. Thankfully, I live in the coldest room on the ship, and it makes sleeping at night an easy task.
Yesterday was pretty much a red letter day as far as life at sea goes. Sundays are “holiday routine” meaning that they don’t schedule any meetings or anything in the morning, so if you don’t have watch, you can sleep in. I didn’t have watch until noon, so I got to sleep in until 10:30 in the morning (a big big deal). After watch, we had a cookout out on the flight deck, where it was easily 97 degrees, and a couple of us took out our gloves and played catch on our 40-ft long flight deck. After the sun set, I went up on top of the ship to ride the stationary bike for a good workout and look at the stars on a pristine night.
Tomorrow, we go through one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century: The Panama Canal. For centuries, people have tried to build a bridge connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic. Most notably, in the late 1800s, the French tried to mimic their successful Suez Canal feat in Panama, but their technique of basically digging a giant ditch resulted in catastrophe. After thousands of their workers died, and no successful end to the project in sight, the French abandoned the process.
In the early 1900s, America decided to take a shot at it by taking a different approach. Instead of digging a river, they created a series of 5 locks leading into a giant lake in the middle of the country. Ships enter the locks, which fill up with water, and then they connect to a new lock before reaching the lake in the middle. On the other side, the water drains from each lock as the ships move down back to sea level. It’s a feat that has saved ships from going around the horn of South America and navigating the most dangerous waters in the world (a job that our ship will be doing later this deployment… but that will be another story for later). Until then, I’ll go back to the standard day of watch, reading, and working out.

The first few days

Well, talk about an inauspicious start to deployment. We were scheduled to leave San Diego at 10 a.m. on Friday morning. When a ship gets underway, there’s a certain amount of fanfare involved. Families come to say a tearful goodbye to wave the ship off, sailors dress in our formal dress blues uniforms and go topside to stand along the edges of the ship (called manning the rails) to see the ship off. It looks pretty cool, and it’s a nice sight for families standing on the pier to see as the ship pulls away.
Unfortunately, none of that happened. About an hour before we were set to leave, we got word that the machine that started the engines was broken. No engines, no deployment. We troubleshot the issue all day with some shore guys, and finally got underway at about 4 p.m. This time, we had changed out of our dress uniforms and didn’t man the rails, since there were only a handful of loyal well wishers on the pier. So much for the pomp and circumstance of my first deployment.
With our engineering problems resolved, we set out to sea, where the problems only got worse. Essentially, our entire satellite communications suite went down. Our GPS was broken. Our internet was gone. Our phone, disconnected. T.V.? No way. Even our gyrocompass, the system that tells us what direction we’re going, broke. Then its backup did too. It took us an hour to realize it. The Navy had no clue where we were—and worse—neither did we. We couldn’t even check the score of the B.U.-Kansas game on the internet. After a couple days of that, the hardworking sailors on the ship finally started to fix the problems, one by one. First the GPS, then the gyrocompass, then the internet. Finally, we were back up and working as an operational warship.
Things have slowed down since the first 36 hours, and we’re finally getting into the groove of deployment: Standing watch, taking care of paperwork, working out, eating dinner, etc. Hopefully the ship stays this calm for at least a few more weeks, or at least until we chat again.

Last days in port

I commissioned in May of 2010, so I've been an officer for about ten months now. Time really flies, but I'm finally coming into my own as an officer. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the military, officers lead the enlisted troops. As an ensign, I'm one of 25 officers on a ship with about 180 enlisted sailors. I'm given a division on the ship and tasked with leading them-- a daunting task for an Ensign who has been in the Navy all of two weeks. I didn't know how to get around the ship, much less lead sailors who have been in the Navy for 20 years. New officers are normally given command of a division with a Chief Petty Officer in it. Chiefs are enlisted subject matter experts who have worked with the equipment for a number of years (normally at least 12 years or so). He's a division officer (or a DivO's) right-hand man. He will teach you, train you, and basically run the division with you overseeing him.

DivO's jobs are varied. I'm given spaces (rooms, hallways, closets) that I'm in charge of, equipment I'm in charge of, and personnel that I'm responsible for. In addition, I need to learn how to be a mariner (drive the ship, fight it, etc.) oversee day-to-day and month-to-month scheduling in my division, and drive the ship while underway, in addition to about 8 or 9 "collateral" duties. Some of my collateral duties are to be in charge of safety for the whole ship, coordinate with other ships on tactical information sharing, and running the officer's food and general slush fund.

My primary duty is my job as the Combat Information Center Officer (CICO). This means that I'm in charge of the space where we fight the ship. I have 18 sailors in my division and they run all the consoles like radar and communications systems. The Navy has a "rating" system, where enlisted sailors select a specific area where they work. There are quartermasters, who navigate the ship, gunner's mates, who shoot ordnance, and dozens and dozens of other rates (including things like journalists, musicians, engineers, supply guys, etc). My men are all "Operations Specialists" (abbreviated as OS).

Life for OS's is hit or miss. Underway, they stand 12 hours of watch a day-- much more than the 5 I stand a day. But in port, they don't do much. Since they only use the consoles, they don't have to work on fixing them-- other rates specialize in that. So in port, it's not uncommon to see OS's leave around lunch, which I don't mind them doing sometimes since they work so hard at sea.

As the months before deployment turn into weeks and days, life is accelerating more and more as we try to do last-minute preps for deployment. I've been averaging 10-hour days for the past few weeks, including one day where I worked straight from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.-- and still didn't knock out the work I had to do for the day. Normal in-port life is relatively easy, with work from 7-3 every day (instead of 9-5). But deployment is another animal entirely, and life is always jam-packed underway.

With just 8 days left before our voyage, I'm hoping to slow the pace down for my division and give them time with their families this weekend and next week, because they won't see them for another 6 months-- a trying thing for newly-married 20-year-old sailors. Next time I'll try and talk a bit more about life and how it will change once we embark on our long journey around South and Central America.