Home Sweet Home, sorta...

So, where to begin. Alright, well, after my last post, we got a pre-flight brief from one of the pilots. Basically the skinny was, if we crash in the water, wait til the plane finishes spinning around, then punch out the window and swim out. Then pull the little beaded handles and your life vest will inflate.

Luckily, we didn’t have to use it since the crash course was probably less than completely sufficient. We boarded the helo and took off, en route to the John Paul Jones. It was a pretty long flight, just over 2 hours. It actually wasn’t hot because the doors were open (luckily, not the one next to me because I was terrified of falling out!) The lift-off part was pretty cool (shown left), as was seeing Bahrain from the sky. The “Kingdom” is basically building out from their country into the ocean, sort of like what Dubai is doing. You can also see from the pictures that the water is BEAUTIFUL.










Then we landed on the USS John Paul Jones for a quick stop over. (Flight Deck landing shown below). I ran into my friend, Heather Koerner, who I went to UVA with- we were both midshipman in the NROTC Unit. When I found out last night that we were swinging by the JPJ, I sent her a facebook message and luckily she saw it and was there to meet us. It was SO nice to see a familiar face there, she helped us with our bags (all 300 lbs + of them!) and then we had a snack in the Wardroom, changed into our cammies and headed to the RHIB!

The seas weren’t too terrible, but definitely not the smoothest. We loaded all 8 of our bags and 5 boxes of mail into the small, 18 ft RHIB. The coxswain drove the RHIB like he stole it and we sped off to ABOT. You can see a photo here of ABOT from the JPJ. My knees & legs are all bruised though, we kept coming WAY high out of the water and then crashing down- water spraying EVERYWHERE!

I desperately wanted to take pictures but we were going SO fast that if I had even TRIED to remove one hand from the white knuckle grip of death that I had on the RHIB, both me and my new camera would have gone overboard. We arrived at ABOT at the very bottom and climbed a latter up to the main deck. We also slowly dragged all 300 lbs of our gear up there too. Here is a picture of ABOT sweet ABOT from the JPJ.

ABOT is a crazy, weird, strangely awesome place. I don’t have time to talk ALL about it; the post would go on forever! I will focus the next few days on the different aspects including food, lay-out, who’s here and what we’re doing.

For now, I will just briefly say that it is a large off-shore oil distributing terminal. The oil is produced in Iraq and sent via underground pipes to ABOT. ~$100 million of oil flows through ABOT each day, and the terminal can support 4 HUGE tankers refueling at a time. The oil also makes up 80% of Iraq’s GDP.

So who’s here? Currently there are 100 SOC (Southern Oil Company) workers. They work on the north-west portion of the terminal. That’s where they work, eat, live, etc. They only come over to our side to play basketball and rig up any ships on the part of the terminal that we occupy. Over on that side there are also about 50 Iraqi security force personnel. Right now we are working to train them to defend the platform themselves. The terminal is obviously of great strategic importance in the region- we really feel like we are at the epicenter of Middle East strategic planning. It’s kind of a cool feeling. We also have about 50 Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces; these guys (and a few gals) are mostly reservists, serving out of Kuwait Naval Base. They are super gung-ho, love being out here and very nice people. They are the ones that do the roving security watch. They patrol the terminal and are responsible for the point-defense of the terminal. There are also approximately 30 SeaBees (navy engineers), committed to helping “rebuild” the terminal to make it safe. Bless these guys, but it would take a decent size Army to make this terminal actually safe. The CDR who heads up the SeaBees, we call him the “Mayor” because he “runs the city” so to speak.

Then there is the DESRON, 22 of us committed to keeping the waters around the terminal clear, getting and keeping the maritime picture and disseminating information to the task group of ships who are supporting the mission. Mostly officers, a few very talented and specialized enlisted and I am one of the most junior officers. There are a few other LTJG’s but they are mostly LDO’s. There are currently 6 women on the terminal. Myself and Nicole are 2 of the officers, plus the girl Alexi that Nicole is relieving. Then there are 2 female enlisted Sailors on the DESRON and one here with the security force. However, Alexi is leaving soon, which is sad because she is very sweet and has been SUCH a help to us.

We spent the afternoon touring the platform (I will take pictures tomorrow and explain what living here is like), meeting the CSO (Chief Staff Officer) and the Commodore. The Commodore is the Captain of the DESRON. They were both very welcoming and made me very excited about my job here. It does however sound like it will be a lot of work which is fine, except for the fact that I have NO training or background in being a Training Officer and unfortunately since I did not go to school for this, nor am I getting a face to face turnover with the guy I’m relieving (he left at the end of July!), I am not really certain who to ask for help. I think I might talk to my friend Heather on the JPJ & see if she can put me in touch with their TRAINO. I feel silly, a DESRON TRAINO asking a ship TRAINO for help, but I do not know a lot about my job but would like to learn. The CSO put it well tonight “That’s the thing about DESRONs, no one really knows what we’re supposed to do, we all just kinda figure it out together”

I found out that my boss, the N7 in charge of readiness will be leaving in December/January with no relief named for him yet, so I will have to take his place in the interim. He also goes into Iraq a lot to work on the training plans with the Iraqis. I am hoping that I don’t have to do that, although they said they are shying away from taking women, not because we’re not good at our jobs but because overall, as a culture, they are not quite as responsive when it comes to learning from the women. That’s fine with me, I can see enough of Iraq from here, I don’t need to get any closer ☺

Well, that’s about it for now. I can’t wait to tell you all about the food and the laundry system and show pictures of where we live and work. I definitely still wish I was at home but there is a lot about ABOT that is WAY better than a ship (blogging and skype being one of them- I LOVE talking to Dan and other family & friends everyday). You should consider skype if you don’t already have it- it’s terrific!

There is also a lot of structural integrity problems here on ABOT as a result of the Iran/Iraq tanker wars here in the 80’s which I will photograph and discuss at a later date. I will also include the links to two sites which teach you a little more about ABOT; a news paper article and a short YouTube video of a helo flying overhead- to help give you a better visual.

Well, that’s all for now folks. It’s about 10:30 here so it’s time for my nightly attempt to recover from jet-lag! Tomorrow is my first full day of work so I may not have as much time to write but I look forward to sharing some more stories, idiosyncrasies and humorous facts about life on ABOT! Love to you all


And for a sneak peek for tomorrow's description- here's a picture of P-5, This is a view from the catwalk by my room so we have to walk that REALLY long catwalk out to the buildings. Enjoy!