How is everyone at home? Things have settled into a routine of sorts here… The schedule still changes more often than the weather but it’s been nothing we really can’t handle
We still haven’t been able to board a pirate vessel, despite encountering a few, partially due to weather (too rough for the small pirate skiffs). The new admiral (Rear Admiral Sanders), though, in addition to being a very personable and fun guy, also has his staff working on new and innovative ways to “get the pirates”. I would expect more media coverage of the mission in the future. Conerning the last staff; the international cooperation they achieved was incredible—I mean, a Turkish admiral (Rear Admiral Bener) on an American ship with Americans, Pakistanis, Turks, and—get this—a Greek officer on his staff, giving tasking to American, Turkish, British, Korean, Pakistani, Singaporean, German, Norwegian, French, and Australian ships and aircraft is a first in international naval cooperation.
We’re officially halfway through deployment, now. We had festivities on “hump day” that were kind of like a “field day” (a civilian field day, not a navy one—navy ones involve lots and lots of cleaning)—tug of war, egg toss, Pie in the Face auction, talent show, ice cream social, cigar social, hot dog eating competition, milk chugging competition, steel beach picnic (what we call a barbeque), flight deck movie, etc. It was fun, although I spent a decent portion of the day on watch (5 hours). Just counting down the days and working on my qualifications, now. My new division (CC—Combat Communications; consists of Information Technology Specialists—IT’s) feels like a bit of step up, in the sense that it’s less intense. The ITs pretty much run the show on their own; what I do is divisional admin and keep a good situational awareness of what systems are up or down. It’s given me a lot more time to work on my qualifications, and also sleep :D. I’m still an on-call Anti-Submarine Warfare Evaluator in case we enter an ASW environment or have an exercise but that’s a secondary thing.
I’ve been thinking about what to do when I get home… It depends on what Mac’s schedule is like. There’s a possibility that I’ll get home in early December and Mac will be underway on an exercise until the 3rd or 4th week of December… in that case, I’m going to use some of my leave time to take a trip up the east coast, hit up DC and NY, maybe go visit friends and cousins like Will and Johnny, maybe Uncle John.
-Posted by ned from email excerpts