Humanitarian relief

Just when I thought that we were going to spend months out to sea without catching any drug runners or anything besides playing war games, this morning happened.

I came up to the bridge around 0530 for watch, expecting the most exciting thing to be flight quarters where we brought the DESRON staff onboard, when I kept hearing everyone buzzing about a fishing vessel with a bunch of people onboard. Apparently early in the morning, they kept hearing all of this buzz over the bridge to bridge (BTB) radio, but not really being able to understand what the guy was saying, they just kept hearing “americanos! Americanos!” and they had to get one of our lookouts come talk over the radio who spoke Spanish.

Well, lo and behold, there, a few thousand yards away was a rusted and decrepit looking fishing vessel. It was my job to give the commands to get our ship about 500 yards away from the fishing vessel. It was challenging, as their ship was DIW (dead in the water) and we had a strong current, essentially pushing us away from the ship, but we wanted to be on their port side, otherwise we’d have to worry about the wind pushing us onto them.

We get up there and we man up all of our force protection stations (because you can’t be exactly sure who a vessel is) and we called away flight quarters to have our helo get close to see what was going on the vessel. We had a bunch of guys looking over our “big eyes” (really powerful binoculars, essentially, that stand up) to try and figure out what was going on. you could see really clearly onto the ship and see people’s faces. There were about 72 people on a 60 ft fishing vessel. We could see people scaling fish, and fish and clothes hanging all over the vessel. The people were all male, teenagers and older and they were waving at us. We figured out from BTB that they had been out there for 3 days and their engine was broken.

Of course, we had to assume any vessel is hostile, just to be safe. We sent our RHIB over with our VBSS team, an engineer, and doc. The VBSS team cleared the ship, making sure it was safe and there were no weapons or anything on board. The engineering went down into the spaces to see what was going on, turns out their shaft on their propeller was broken and they had a fuel leak. The Doc inspected everyone, and while many of them complained of fevers and stomach aches, miraculously, no one had any critical injuries.

The RHIB then returned to the ship, and we received the report of what was going on. the boat had left Nicaragua before the hurricane, and they had hoped to ride the hurricane out at sea, and get away from the storm. Their shaft broke shortly after leaving, and they have been stuck about 30 nm from land. What was most shocking was that the only water they had to drink was the water from the ice they were melting, the ice which was being used to keep fish and lobsters chilled; they were using the same water to cook rice and they were eating raw fish. I didn’t get to go over in the small boat, but 2 of my friends did and they said it was the worst sight they had ever seen. We went back to their boat with lots and lots of boxed lunches. We talked to them over BTB and we could hear them in the background shouting “god bless god bless, muchas gracias! Muchas gracias!”

They needed to be towed back to shore, but in order for that to happen, we’d be required to bring them all onboard, which would be very challenging. We could have done it if we had to, but it would have been dangerous to bring possible diseases onboard, plus we don’t exactly have the living spaces for 72 more people. We were able to hail another fishing boat who was owned by the same person who owned the broken down ship, and we stayed with the vessel til the working boat came and waited to see them hook up the tow and go back to shore. The guys that delivered the food said they were so happy, and literally gobbling it down.

It almost broke my heart to see this ship, and her people, and it made me so grateful to be onboard a safe ship with plenty of food, water, and medical care. It definitely put things in perspective and we were all so happy to finally feel like we were doing some good for people out here. It was very fulfilling and I know we were all glad to get to help them out.

As for now, we’re just waiting for our next tasking to help out in the HADR effort. We’re also keeping our fingers crossed for a port visit- we could REALLY use a day off! Til then, I’m just counting down the days til I’m back!!! Time is moving relatively quickly; probably because we’re busy and probably because we’re all excited to come back!