Crossing the Line

Last week, we crossed over the equator, which means three things. Number one, we’re heading back north to home. Number two, the warm weather is back. But finally, it means that we all had to become shellbacks. What is a shellback? Read on… I’ll explain.
The tradition of “crossing the line” goes back so far that nobody really knows where or when it began. In the old days, it was a test for sailors to determine if new shipmates were fit for duty. They’d be put through a serious of rigorous “tests” where they were beat and bloodied, and if they passed, they were fair shipmates. As time progressed, it became more elaborate and more dangerous. In the last 20 years or so, the danger has dropped off significantly due to the Navy’s strict safety/anti-hazing stances, but we still do it in some form or another.
The way the legend goes is this: King Neptune, ruler of the deep, comes on our ship to find that there are slimy Polywogs (those who have not crossed the line) onboard. King Neptune declares that this is unacceptable and that they all must be converted into trusty Shellbacks. He calls on his Shellback disciples onboard to carry out the initiation. The Polywogs are charged with various crimes and subpeoned before King Neptune’s court (with Davy Jones as his right hand man) and asked to plead guilty to the crimes to purge themselves of their sins.
The day before this initiation, it’s tradition for the Polywogs to revolt. We did so in grand fashion, but paid the price the next day. The night before, each division of Polywogs was to prepare a talent show for the Shellbacks. Stupidly, they all gathered in one spot, leaving the rest of the ship open to looting and pillaging. Myself and the rest of the junior officers broke into the Captain’s stateroom and stole his door. Later on in the evening, we stole the ship’s bell, which is instrumental in everyday use both for practical purposes (ringing bells every half hour for the time) and tradition. They found the door that night, but didn’t find the bell until the next day when I told them where it was. For the ceremony, I was the first one through the ceremony and in the last group to finish.
The next morning, we were woken up at 5 a.m. and made to crawl around before being taken to breakfast, where they basically threw gross food at you, covered you in syrup and raw eggs, and then sprayed you with a fire hose. We were forced to work out, climb through buckets of “slime” water (that was colored green) and given hair styles from the “royal barber” who put mayonnaise, coffee grinds, and hot sauce in our hair. All the while, we were being sprayed with fire hoses on a consistent basis. It lasted until about 11 a.m.
All in all, it was a miserable experience that my body is still recovering from, but I am no longer a slimy wog… Next time, I will be the one spraying people with hoses and cracking eggs on their heads. We’ll be steaming around off the coast of Ecuador for the next week or so before getting some gas and heading up to Panama for the start of our last multi-national exercise of the deployment. But more on that later…

Lima, Peru, Day 1

Well, we’re in port, Lima, Peru. I am on duty today, but last night I had liberty, so this latest story is hot off the presses.
Liberty in South America has a lot of restrictions. They care a lot about how Americans look, so they have rules like calling in to the ship twice a night and of course, if we have duty, we have to be back to the ship the next morning by 8 a.m.—earlier (about 7:30) if you have watch.
We went out on liberty and decided to take overnight liberty, even though we had to get up at 5 a.m. to catch a bus back to the ship to make it for duty. Since we didn’t really plan on sleeping much, we decided to get a bed at a hostel. We had no bags, and it was only $7 for the night, so it was a good deal to have a place to stay. We went out for the night and partied until about 3 a.m. before turning in and going back to the hostel. Our one friend had turned in early, and he had the alarm clock. When we showed up at the hostel, he wasn’t there, and we had no idea where he was. We assumed that waiting here would be the best thing—that he would find his way back. We also knew that we were meeting at 5:25 at the hotel next to the bus stop if we ever got separated. It was our fail-safe.
We had no alarm clocks (we didn’t even plan on staying out overnight, but met a group of girls at a bar who invited us to a club, and we couldn’t say no) so we told the guy at the front desk we needed a wakeup at 5 a.m. to get back to the ship. We explained how important it was, and that he needed to make sure we were awake. He promised to throw water on our faces if we didn’t get up.
He didn’t.
Next thing I know, I wake up to my lost friend screaming, “Let’s go, let’s go!” Turns out, he couldn’t find the hostel. He got a room at another hotel and showed up at the fail-safe spot at the right time, but we never showed, so he assumed we had slept in. Somehow he found the hostel in the morning when it was light out. I looked at my watch. 6:25. We had just over an hour to get to the bus, take the 45 minute ride to the ship, change, and get on watch. It would never happen. The consequences for being late for duty are severe. In general, with few exceptions, you won’t be allowed to leave the ship for the duration of this port as well as the next two or three. Considering we only have 1 port left after this, it means not leaving the ship for 2 months until San Diego. No bueno.
We were dressed and out the door in under 90 seconds and started running toward the bus stop 10 blocks away. We still had time. If we could get a bus that leaves before 6:45, we’d be okay. We were told we weren’t allowed to take taxis because of their penchant for robberies, and even though there were approved taxi companies, they couldn’t get us onto the base anyway—we had to be with an official USN bus to get on. I ran faster than the other two members of my group, and at 6:40, I rounded the corner to see the bus. I broke into a sprint for the bus about 100 yards away… And then the bus started driving in the opposite direction.
At this point, I’d slept for maybe three hours—probably less. I was still half-drunk. I had been running at a pretty good pace for the last 10 minutes, a little over a mile, in shoes that were not meant for running, and I was starting to feel it. I hadn’t drank water in 10 hours, since you need to buy bottled water here and nothing was open when we left the club. I’ve heard stories about mothers overturning cars to save their children, or the man after the battle of Marathon who ran 25 miles, only to squeak out the word, “Victory” before dropping dead. But I never knew what went through those people’s minds or how they did it… Until I saw that bus driving away, and my liberty for the next two months with it.
I started running faster. I don’t know how, but I did. (My friend can attest to that.) It was like the last scene in “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off” when he’s running back home. I was cutting through parks, cutting corners, doing anything I could to keep with the bus. I was waving my arms and screaming at the bus as I was running, creeping closer and closer to the bus. I followed it for about 10 blocks—a flat out sprint for 5 minutes, until it ran a stop sign and turned onto a main street, as if it were hell-bent on leaving us behind. I now know how Carl Yaztremski felt when Bucky (Bleepin’) Dent hit a homerun to win the pennant in 78’. The grainy footage shows Yaz’s knees buckle when he sees the ball go over the fence—as his soul is sucked out of him and all hope is lost. That’s how I felt. I stood there for a second watching the bus fade away before remembering something: the bus was on a one-way road going away from the ship. It had to double back on another 1-way street. It was our last hope. I started sprinting again and ran back onto the main thoroughfare and stopped in the middle of the street. Lo and behold, there was a bus driving right toward me, just like it should have been. I stood in the middle of the street screaming and waving my arms. The bus stopped and I jumped for joy. I’d done it! I was a hero! I ran over to the side of the bus and went to get on before realizing that it was the wrong bus. I won’t repeat the words that I shouted here, but I was mad. The bus was gone, and so was our liberty. It was 6:50.
The worst part was that I had to run all the way back to the bus stop where my friends were, even after sprinting for 5 straight minutes. In the end, we had to take a cab back to the port and talk our way into the base before running across the base to get to the ship. We were there by 7:28. Two minutes to spare. Somehow, we made it back to the ship, and nobody even knew what happened. We’re tired and hungover, and ran something like 2 miles while drunk. I’m sore in places I didn’t know you could be sore. But we made it back on time and nobody’s the wiser.
Thankfully, I have duty today to rest. We have two more days of liberty on Saturday and Sunday. Instead of 15 hours of time off, we have 48. Who knows what will happen then…

Finally Leaving Chile

Boy, it’s been too long since I’ve written in here! So much has happened, and we’ve been so busy, that I haven’t had time to write back e-mails, much less update the blog.
We are currently transiting north toward Peru for our next port visit later this week. We finally are out of Chile, where we made 6 port calls. It seems like our second home port, but it’s nice to be moving north toward warmer weather. We already can go outside without a jacket on, which is a huge plus! Last week marked the end of our UNITAS Pacific phase of deployment where we were working with other navies. Now, we have a month of independent steaming to get to Panama for the start of PANAMAX, our final exercise, in mid-August. This means that steaming will be easy and pretty dull for the next couple of weeks, which is actually nice compared to the stress of multi-ship exercises.
A couple of weeks ago, I got my Officer of the Deck qualification. That means that now, when I stand watch, I am in charge of the safety for the entire ship, as well as making sure that the entire plan of the day is executed. It’s probably the biggest qualification in an officer’s career, so it’s nice to have that over with. I also moved into a stateroom last week, a three-man room with a computer, TV, lots of storage, and bigger begs, which has improved my quality of life tenfold. Thankfully, I’m moving up in the world after putting in my time for the last 13 months.
I had the opportunity last week to be on a Chilean ship for 3 days, which was a nice change of pace and interesting to see how the Chilean Navy does things. The best variation from the U.S. Navy? Tea time. Every day, 3 p.m. You sit around and drink tea and eat fresh-baked bread. It was great.
Last week, one of the most dynamic officers on our ship departed to go to his next duty as a ROTC instructor at Virginia Military Institute. The guy reminded me a lot of Dean Moriarty (real life Neal Cassady) in On The Road… a larger than life character that really enjoyed life, drank a lot of beer, and did everything big, bigger, better. Without him on board, life has become a lot more two-dimensional, and I’m sure liberty ports will be even more impacted. Seriously, the guy doubled my tolerance over the past four months. He’ll be missed.
Just over two months left of deployment, so we can finally start counting down until we head back to San Diego. The bulk of our port calls, unfortunately, are over, with about 2 weeks in between each port from here on out, but that will be good to keep the beer weight off and the money in my wallet, especially since casinos in Chile are, I’m convinced, rigged against me more so than American casinos.