Clarification on the previous post...

I just wanted to clarify that everything that happened today was in a drill--- there were no people injured, no missile attacks against SBR, no fires or flooding. We’re still kicking and making our way through the Western Caribbean.

However, we failed some pretty crucial parts of the drill at the beginning when we had to set “zebra” condition. The ship is divided into different “sections” of air and water tight doors that are used to keep a/c in spaces that you’d want cool, and not lose it to spaces that would be impossible to cool regardless. It also pressurizes the different spaces on the ship. Normally, we are in condition “yoke,” but in the event of GQ, the first thing that has to be done is go around securing different hatches that are normally open to prevent the spread of oxygen or gas around fires.

Apparently, people were coming back to the locker officers reporting that they had set zebra when indeed they didn’t go the full step to screw all the bolts in tight. Around 1330 today they called away GQ AGAIN and we all had to go back to our spaces to practice setting zebra. We also had a de-brief from the morning’s drill to talk about what went wrong and how to improve next time.

Luckily, my fear of hearing “ENS Harris, your presence is requested in the Executive Officer’s stateroom” over the 1MC in regards to my performance as locker office never came into existence, and there were communication problems across all the different lockers; repair 2 was hit with a missile and the people there had to move to repair 5 and the two lockers meshed and comms were a nightmare.

Overall, it was an eventful day and I’m sure we will be running MANY more GQ drills in the upcoming weeks.