Another laid back Navy day...

Wow- ok, where to begin? I can’t believe it’s 5 day of our deployment- it feels like a month has gone by! How can it only be July 28th???

The past few days have been busy, though I’ve been lucky to be on a schedule where I sleep for 5 hours a night at the same time every night! I’ve been busy standing watch, getting my PQS taken care of, and running the division.

The biggest thing on my plate right now is preparing for the inspection called ULTRA-S at the end of the deployment in late September. The closest thing I can compare it to in the civilian world is like an auditor. Basically, a bunch of people, who do nothing but study the in’s and out’s of frigates every day, come on board for like 4 days and study us. Our exercises, our divisions, our maintenance, our drill- EVERYTHING. Basically, they’re looking for stuff that we do wrong, which is inevitable on a ship of 200 people doing 200 million things a day. To prepare, we have check sheets for each “program” that our divisions run and we have go through in the next few months and “audit” ourselves to make sure that everything is current and up to standards and that we are doing things on time. My divisions owns the tag-out program (where you have to put a “caution” or “danger” tag on equipment that people may want to work on to warn them of the dangers of working on that machinery) and the electrical safety program, which is just what its name states.

I haven’t gotten to the tag-out program check sheet, but going through the electrical safety program, I have to make sure that everyone in the division is qualified to issue and use tools (and update their equals to the most recent ones), ensure the they are receiving CPR training, issuing tools safely and by the standards, and that the crew is receiving electrical safely training annually. Prior to pulling into Trinidad, I will probably have to give the entire crew a brief on electrical safety.

Aside from that, I am personally working on my maintenance qualification, my electrical safety qual, and my basic damage control qual, all which must be completed prior to ULTRA-S.

This leads very well to my latest and greatest story on damage control. Today we had a massive training scenario where we set was is known as General Quarters. GQ occurs in a battle type of environment, where the whole ship reports to their respective battle stations and prepares to do whatever it is that is called away. Normally it is a small drill, such as toxic gas or firefighting or the like. Today however, we did an integrated training exercise where we simulated a transit through the straights of hormuz to the gulf of oman while being attacked by Iranian forces.

(I must here interject that this is a very similar setting that this very same SBR encountered when they were hit by a mine in 1988. Also, for any of you ROTC kids following this, it was very similar to our battle problem in NASC 302 last semester. After participating in this GQ, I can now say I would much rather be on land planning the defensive air strike, than be on a US Navy frigate suffering the casualties)

My GQ station is at Repair Locker 3 as the Repair Locker Officer U/I (under instruction). Basically, the ship has 3 “fire stations” known as repair lockers from where they fight fires. I am currently there as the U/I for whenever we call away GQ, which has happened exactly twice on the ship: once to fight a fire and once for a toxic gas, both times however, the casualties were secured by lockers other than my own, and my guys just stood by as stand ins.

Today, as we tracked Iranian enemy aircraft, our repair locker stood by. We were hit by numerous missiles that caused fire, flooding, and medical casualties. As the medical casualties were called away, the locker officer who I was learning from had to leave to report to the Triage, as he was a triage officer. We stood around for an hour or so and nothing really happened; the other lockers fought fires, combat fought the enemies and we thought all was fine. Then, around 10:30 am, we had casualties by repair 3. First, my locker leader (the enlisted guy very qualified in repair lockers) became a “casualty” and rendered useless. This was followed by the loss of 2 more guys and a class Alfa fire. I of course, have absolutely no idea what was happened; I’d observed this in about 1/10 the scale exactly twice and my phone talker (the guy communicated with Central) did not understand that it was his job to clearly talk on the phone; he couldn’t copy down and track the casualties fast enough, and couldn’t report our progress to central fast enough.

It was basically a huge circus of medical emergencies, fires, floods, etc, with me at the helm as locker officer with no leader who knew what he was doing. The next most qualified guy was the on-scene leader, meaning he was at the front of the team leading everyone into the fire and comms got so tangled that I couldn’t even communicate with him. All in all, I felt like I was hit by the mack truck of damage control, ironically NOT in control of anything.

In the end, the fire was put out and the flooding stopped and the medical casualties treated, but in the interim it was basically like being in the middle of a storm trying to stay tied on the ground. Most of it wasn’t my fault; as the watchbill should have been configured to ensure that an Ensign who isn’t damage control qualified who’d never been to repair locker school, would not be in charge of a repair locker in the middle of an massive ship-wide integrated training exercise.

Now that it’s all over, I just want a strong drink and a nap, but alas I must get back to work for the remainder of the day and then stand watch tonight. It looks like we will be pulling into GITMO this weekend to refuel; unfortunately for me, the only thing I will see is the pier from the ship, but if it’s any consolation, no one can leave the base. (Obviously, because it’s Cuba).

I am very much looking forward to our port visit in Curacao, though it will be short, it will be a well-deserved one day break. Luckily, I don’t have duty on the one full day that we’re there, which coincidently is also August 5th, my birthday! Hopefully I will have a bunch of JOs to go out with.

In the mean time, we are busy keeping our eyes peeled for Columbian cocaine transporting ships and hoping that we make a good bust in the next few weeks! Otherwise, this could turn out to be a pretty monotonous deployment, with nothing to take us away from the daily routine of watch, fixing things, and admin stuff.

I will try & update again this weekend; even though I have duty, I shouldn’t be too busy so hopefully I will get a chance to respond to everyone who I haven’t yet already! Miss you all!