Turkey day underway

Happy Turkey Day!

Today was certainly not like days of Thanksgiving past, that’s for sure. I got off watch at 2am & since today was a holiday, I slept until ~10am. Then I worked out & ate lunch & worked on some articles for the newspaper back home. After lunch we had a frocking ceremony for all of the Sailors who advanced to the next higher pay grade. Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain & chilly outside.

Today is a day off, which is nice, but unfortunately I have watch at 5pm tonight so I will miss Thanksgiving Dinner. I will eat dinner early on the mess decks tonight but when you eat early dinner, you only get ~10 minutes to eat before you have to go on watch, so that kinda sucks. Maybe it’s a good thing, I can’t consume as much as in 10 minutes as I do during a usual Thanksgiving meal.

This morning the cooks dressed 14 turkeys for dinner & I saw all of the pies thawing in the galley (bummer for no homemade pumpkin chiffon pie with ginger snap crust L ) The wardroom is having a formal dinner tonight so I requested a late plate of stuffing & gravy. I already can’t wait to get off watch at 10pm to eat it!

It seems as though our HA/DR missions are not going as excitingly as we first expected. Yesterday the helo flew missions for recon but today we got no taskings for anything to do. SOUTHCOM “leased” us to the Panamanian consulate for 72 hours for rescue assistance but it appears that the Panamanian consulate is enjoying the holidays instead of tasking us so now we are starting to feel like we’re not being very helpful around here, which is a bummer all around. Our “lease” ends tmw AM so after that I think we will go back to hunting drugs unless we can prove to be of some serious assistance. This season is considered the “holiday rush” before Christmas, which is supposedly good drug hunting season. I of course capitalized on this holiday rush idea with some lame joke about how we should get up early & run around the ocean to try & catch all of the drug runners out here for “Black Friday” tomorrow.

Although it’s a day off & all, the mood around here is definitely less spirited than Thanksgiving at home. My friend Christian showed up to the frocking ceremony really bummed out about being out here so I told some lame jokes in an attempt to cheer him up. Then I asked him what he was thankful for and he said that he was thankful for friends who told lame jokes and tried to cheer him up. Hopefully a good meal will improve everyone’s spirits

Well, I’d better run off to dinner & watch. I’ll update with some pictures later but til then, Happy Thanksgiving, enjoy some stuffing for me & I miss everyone a lot right now.

Dan comes to visit

Hi Friends & Family!

Well, here we are, back underway from Panama City. This was certainly a crazy port visit. It started out as the best port visit EVER. After liberty went down on Sunday, I headed out to town with some friends & got a call on my cell phone from Dan, which was a pleasant surprise. The even MORE pleasant surprise was that he was in Panama City & had flown down for the weekend to see me! [Note from Dan: When I called Molly I told her "I'm in Panama!" She responded "What!? What!? You're in Panama!? I'm in Panama!!" To which I say, "I know, that's why I'm in Panama."]

Needless to say, after my SWO board and whatnot it was so AWESOME to see Dan & celebrate! We did some errands that I needed to do and then we hung out at the main hotel/casino in PC with a bunch of my friends from the ship. Dan made good friends with my friend Christian as his blackjack partner & the two of them dominated a table. Then we went out to a great steak & red wine dinner & then back to the casino. It was SO much fun and it was so awesome to catch up with Dan & tell him all of the stories that can be cumbersome to type over long emails!

The next day we had plans to go to the CO’s Hail & Farewell, a big dinner with the whole Wardroom that we have whenever someone is about to depart this ship. The CO is about to do a Change of Command so we were planning to go to this restaurant for a big party to celebrate & I was excited b/c I was technically on duty but was going to get off of duty to go to the Hail & Farewell & Dan was going to be able to go too!

However, while I was standing the noon-4pm watch on the Quarterdeck, we received word that we might need to launch our helo in support of a humanitarian assist mission as a result of some flooding somewhere in Panama. For those of you that don’t know, launching a helo inport is a very dangerous evolution due to all of the material/obstructions on a ship/pier as opposed to being out to sea. To make a long story short, the CO cancelled all liberty and we issued a recall to get everyone out in town back on the ship. This involved sending out cab drivers to pick up people that they had dropped off around the city, sending some of the Chiefs out in town to the places that Sailors frequent, and sending out NCIS personnel to round up anyone who looked like a US Sailor to come back to the ship. It was rumored that we would be getting underway that night to transit the Canal northbound to support the rescue effort.

Well, long story short, it took about 24 hours to figure out what our tasking was (and of course it changed about 8 times in that 24 hour duration) and during that time, our liberty was secured because we could be getting underway at any time. So, there Dan was, in Panama City to see me, and I wasn’t allowed off the ship for 48 hours of his time there L It was a huge bummer but we did get one night in of great fun so that is 100% more than we would have gotten had he not come to visit, so once again- you’re awesome Dan J

We found out last night (Tuesday) that we would be leaving port at 11pm to get underway, not transit the Canal, but head around Panama south and then up North to a good spot from which to perform SAR (search & rescue) missions for the disaster relief. Just before we left, we picked up a bunch of water & medical supplies & our helo spent the day today doing recon missions, apparently the Army helocopters out of Honduras were unable to support and so during the day we are flying the recon missions to size up the damage. This is similar to the HA/DR (humanitarian aide, disaster relief) we did last deployment off the coast of Nicaragua, so hopefully it will prove to be helpful to the Panamanians.

After a 2 hour Sea & Anchor Detail beginning at 11pm, I had the 2am to 7am watch so needless to say I was VERY tired. The seas were REALLY bad the entire transit around and I got VERY VERY seasick. I spent a better part of the morning & afternoon in my rack (oh the joys of being qualified J)Luckily, things have calmed down, so keep your fingers crossed they stay that way.
Well, I guess that’s about all I have. I have included three pictures, one of a sunset in Panama City, another of the only picture I have of us from Dan’s visit, and the 3rd is a Mexican sail ship. This ship pulled into port next to us in Panama City. Apparently it had also pulled in a month or so ago when the ship was there & we got to see it pull out. It had all of it’s sailing billowing, with people up all of the masts singing a jolly roger-esque song that was like “Viva Mexico.” Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the sail ship in all of it’s glory, but this made me laugh nonetheless.
Stay tuned for the next edition: Thanksgiving aboard the modern-day Mayflower.

SWO pin!

Hi Everyone!

Well, 17 months to the day after I checked onboard, I had my SWO board. The board itself was only an hour but as you know, the weeks leading up to it after I got back to the ship were stressful with a lot of studying and walkthroughs and whatnot.

The board itself went fine and at the end, we always have to do a Damage Control Practical of some sort. Well, at the end of the board the CO was like “alright, there’s a fire down in Forward boatsun locker- go!” and we leave his stateroom and there’s two FFE’s (fire fighting ensembles) and hard hats & SCBAs (breathing apparatuses) and boots. So we dress out like we’re going to fight a fire, but keep in mind that these outfits are for like 200 lb guys so I looked KINDA ridiculous. Then we got down to the space and there was all of this smoke from the smoke machine and we had to try & put it out. By this time, they assembled all officers down there to watch us and get a good laugh. Afterwards, the CO shut off the smoke machine & we got our pins, so that was really exciting. Hopefully Dan will be able to post these few pictures from that night.

I was taken off of the watch bill for the rest of the night & I ate a peanut butter chocolate chip cupcake (which was amazing!) while watching 27 Dresses while I was tuckered into my rack--- it was a blast; it was the first time I’d like ever watched a movie while out to sea so it felt pretty good.

I’m not going to lie, I felt a little different when I woke up this morning and I felt pretty legit wearing my SWO pin around. On our coveralls, we normally sew a navy blue patch with an embroidered gold SWO pin to it, but because I haven’t gotten a chance to take my coveralls to the guy onboard that sews all of the patches (also, all of the advancement results just came out so most of the Enlisted guys have their uniforms with him to have them altered before the frocking ceremony so he’s pretty backed up right now) I have been wearing my actual bigger gold pin on my coveralls. It kinda sticks out b/c it’s not what you normally wear on your coveralls & it reeks (in a good way) of “I just got qualified” so I feel pretty cool right now.

After we pulled in this morning we had a stores onload of all of our food (thank GOODNESS for real fruit and BUTTER!!!) and afterwards I was sitting in my room in my pink stadium chair just sitting and staring up at the ceiling for lack of anything more productive to do for the time being and my department head was like “hey ORDO- what are you doing right now?” and I was like “ummm, nothing sir……just sitting….” and he was like “that’s cool, b/c now that you’re qualified you can get away with sitting around and doing nothing”… ummm AWESOME!!!

Well, I’d better get going now because liberty has gone down & I’m thinking about going out & about. We should be home for Christmas for some much needed maintenance on some systems so I am pretty excited about that possibility!

Hope everyone is doing well & I’ll write more after this port visit!

SWO Board

Hello Friends!

It’s been awhile since I’m last post, I know. I don’t really have any good excuse except that I’ve been busy studying. Day to day life isn’t too bad. Since my last post though, we haven’t caught any more drugs so that kinda stinks. We have been doing a lot of detainee “cross-decking” because ships can’t take detainees into port for security reasons, so whenever a ship has to pull in, they have to do a detainee offload to another one of the 2 other FFG’s operating out here in the East Pac. We got some more yesterday & we’re on our way to drop them off on another ship b/c we are pulling into port this weekend (woo hoo!)

Not much really to report, just day to day life. There is a virus going around on a bunch of Navy computers which they believe to be caused by thumbdrives, so all of the USB ports have been secured on all of the computers. This is a huge pain in the butt, because most people keep all of their documents on a thumbdrive to move stuff from computer to a computer (especially b/c it’s hard to find a working printer). Not only can we not use thumbdrives, but I haven’t been able to upload my pictures to my ship computer and the ones I upload to my Mac, I can’t get off the Mac to put on my ship computer, so unfortunately I can’t email many more pictures. If I could find a CD-rewriteable, I could use that b/c my Mac can burn stuff. I will go out in search of some CD-Rs next week in Panama City.

A few days ago, we took a ship’s picture. This consisted of the entire ship on the foc’sle, bridgewings, and O-3 level. The crew wore their dungarees with Dixie cup hats & the Officers & Chief wore khakis & ties for some sort of throw-back look the XO was going for. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me) I was on watch during this evolution so I did not make it into any of these sweet retro pictures but I have attached two for your viewing pleasure. The picture was supposed to be taken by the helo when it was up in the air but apparently all of their pictures got corrupted so these are the ones taken by one of the Chiefs.

My SWO board is still scheduled for Saturday night, luckily planned with one of the other Ensigns, TJ. The XO took our prospective SWO pins and put each of them on an index card with our names on them & hung them in O-Country passageway bulletin, which is taunting me every time I walk out of my stateroom; I just want to pull the stupid thing off the board and wear it already! Please keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow night, I REALLY hope to be wearing that pin tomorrow night. Hopefully I’ll find a way to get the pictures on this computer so you can see!

Alright, enough time spent dilly-dallying, I should probably get back to learning something. Miss everyone so much & keep good thoughts in your head for me!

Love,
Molly

“This is ENS Harris, I have the Deck!”

Hi everyone!

Sorry for my lame/intermittent emails. It’s definitely taken me a few days to get back into the swing of being underway. I feel like so much has been going on but I’m not really sure where to begin & unfortunately I can’t tell in great detail most of what we’ve been doing.

A few things. I have begun standing my first real watch as Officer of the Deck on the bridge. What does that mean exactly? Well, basically I am in charge of running the bridge watch team (the people that drive the ship) and am in charge of the safe navigation and operation of the ship. Everyone onboard, save for the CO/XO/TAO (tactical action officer) works directly for me while I “have the deck” and I am charged with the crew’s & ship’s safety. It’s a pretty big responsibility to be in charge of a billion dollar warship but it is a very satisfying (albeit stressful) job. It’s a qualification that I’ve been working over a year for.

My first watch was SO boring- 5 hour watch from 2am to 7am during which we made NO course or speed changes and there were no contacts within 50 nm. Anytime you don’t run aground, hit something or get yelled at is generally considered a good watch.

The weather out here is absolutely TERRIBLE- apparently the area in the Pacific around Panama is smack dab in the middle of rainy season which means that it is ALWAYS pouring down rain and visibility is reduced anywhere from 4nm to about 500 yards, as it was this morning (to put it in perspective, on a clear day you can see the horizon about 13-16 nm away).

Basically what we do is remain covert (no navigational lighting whatsoever) while trying to find and catch vessels that are about 30 feet in length traveling about 30-45 knots, in the rain, at night, with no visibility, while trying to launch our helo and lower our small boat into the water with a Coast Guard boarding team (side note: the US Navy is not actually allowed to “hunt drugs” as we are not a policing agency. The Coast Guard, however, does have that jurisdiction and thus they take tactical control of our ship before we conduct a boarding- in fact, we even haul down the US Navy flag & put up the Coast Guard flag to signify that we are a Coast Guard ship) . As you can imagine, that is very challenging and there are a lot of pieces working together, from Combat Information Center (CIC) getting updated intell on where we should go and engineering making sure we have the machinery online necessary to maneuver tactically, to the air detachment getting up in the air & helping us find vessels.

The chases are very fast moving and high stress, and as OOD you are in charge of overseeing all of these different evolutions. The CO & XO are always on the bridge and usually helping to drive the ship.

Other than that, I have just been studying for my SWO board which is coming up pretty quickly. Basically I have a board with the CO/XO and all of the department heads where they quiz me on everything Surface Warfare related. Topics include, but are not limited to:
Carrier Strike Group make-up: all ships & their capabilities & limitations
Carrier Air Wing: what planes we use, what they carry, their caps/lims
Expeditionary Strike Group make-up: ships, amphibious operations
Marine Air Squadron make up & caps/limes
AEGIS weapons systems
Tomahawks & Strike Warfare
Anti-Air Warfare
Joint Operations
Chain of Command (operational/administrative), the different fleets/theaters & their commanders.
Engineering
Weapons
Anti-Submarine Warfare tactics
Admin
Supply
just to name a few. It’s like the biggest final I have ever take in my life times 1,000. I have been studying my butt off for probably 8 hours a day when I am not on watch or sleeping (and there is very little of the latter)

My “murder board” is on Sunday and my actual board is Friday. A murder board is where you get grilled by all of the people who sit on your board (except the CO) to see what you know & what you don’t know. You usually leave feeling like a POS because you suddenly feel like you know nothing. The purpose is to teach you what you don’t know that you need to learn and basically beat you down so you do better on your actual board with the CO. If all goes according to plan, I will be sporting a shiny gold pin this time next week. So until then, I probably won’t write too much, but encouraging thoughts are much appreciated!

I am looking forward to our upcoming port visit back in Panama City. Attached are two pictures from a gunex (gunnery exercise) we had during which my guys shot our 25MM gun. The first is of my Chief shooting & the 2nd is of two of my guys reloading. Enjoy!

Veterans Day

Hi all!

Don’t let this massive “inundation” of the blog right now fool you, I can’t guarantee how long this trend will keep up. This is just going to be short & sweet b/c I think I’m going to go to bed for an hour & a half before watch from 10pm-2am tonight.

For those of you that didn’t notice, today is Veteran’s Day. We celebrated today at 0600 with Tobey Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” on the 1MC (our announcing system) during the morning show. (But don’t worry, being the very politically correct Officer of the Deck that I am, I made sure the guys un-cued the mike when he sings where he’s going to put his boot).

I am obviously incredibly grateful for my freedom, but it’s sometimes challenging to quantify that freedom. It’s almost sort of difficult to think about people back home celebrating freedom (or, at least enjoying perhaps a day off work) while being stuck way out here. So, while floating around in the ocean today, I thought of a few things that I am blessed with out here that our veterans of yesterday’s Navy might not have had and how their sacrifice allowed me to do my job out here with added luxuries that they were forced to go without while fighting for our freedom.

So, in no particular order, here are a few things I’d like to thank a Vet for today:

Relatively quick & reliable communications home. No waiting anxiously for mail call (although I do still love packages J) for the only word from home. Thank goodness for email on deployment
iPods & my iHome that allows me to escape in whatever music I want to listen to.
Coke Zero in the vending machines & a cash card that links said coke zero purchases to my checking account w/o having to worry about having coins on me.
Women on ships (albeit the few of us that there are) that give me a few people to bond with over an US Weekly or Glamour Magazine.
Homemade vanilla cupcakes at dinner with homemade piped vanilla icing, thanks to the cook for our wardroom who brings his own cake decorating kits on deployment.
Ellipticals & yoga DVDs on ships and a closet big enough to store my yoga mat.

I guess that’s about all that I came up with today. I started this list today when I thought of one of my favorite quotes “it’s hard to love the little things, she said. But luckily, you get a lot of opportunities to practice.”

I guess I just spent today trying to think of all of the things that I am appreciative of that veteran’s who were doing my exact job in previous years did not get the luxury to have and how grateful I am to be in the world’s most advanced, powerful & modern Navy.

As we approach Thanksgiving (aka my favorite holiday of the ENTIRE year & if the cooks don’t make real mashed potatoes for dinner I might throw myself overboard), I think it’s always important to take time to think about the little things that you are grateful for.

Alright, my ramblings are clearly going strong & I should probably hit my rack for a wee bit before watch tonight. I can’t promise that I won’t come up with a million & one random thoughts tonight on watch in the middle of the night, but I do promise not to subject you all to pages of said thoughts again (or at least not for a little while J)

Miss you all! Hugs!

Made it to Panama!

Hi Friends!

After an early wake-up, a long layover in Miami and an hour and a half bumpy van ride later, we arrived in Panama City on the evening of the 7th of November.

There is so much to say after being gone from the ship for the past month but I guess I have to start somewhere. We just spent the weekend enjoying what I’ve been told was a much needed, well deserved liberty port. Panama City is a so-so liberty port. We were moored directly at the entrance to the Panama Canal and on our land-side was a lush, green scenery, sort of rainforest like (it reminded me a lot of Dominica). Unfortuntely, with the lush greenery was also a plethora of small, buzzing, nibbling bugs. From our berth, we could see ships enter & exit the Canal at all hours of the day as we were directly across from the commercial port where merchant ships would bring their cargo to be dropped off. Just when we thought our ship was huge to navigate through the Canal, even larger container ships could be seen making their way through.

As far as a liberty port goes, Panama City wasn’t great, but wasn’t awful. A few observations about life in Panama after about 24 hours of liberty. First, the things that I really enjoyed:

1) Cab drivers. There were a handful of cab drivers hand picked by NCIS to be allowed access to the base and they would all gather around the gate waiting for us. For a low price of $10-20 per day per person (depending how early in the day til how late you used him), the cab driver would drive the whole group around all day. Since you didn’t have to pay til the end of the night, the driver had a HUGE incentive not leave you where he dropped you off. And stay he did- anywhere from an hour long dinner to 4 hours at the casino, they patiently wait for you to finish up whatever you are doing, by sitting outside of the door in his cab. The first night in Panama, for $10/person, we got to drive around in this sweet Benz from 7pm-1am, taking us wherever we wanted to go. The 2nd day, we rolled 5 deep in a very old Marquis car for $15 per person from about noon to 1am.

2) Steak. I never loved steak SO much until I came here- it’s sort of like the way Brazil or Argentina is with their meat- cooked outstandingly and SO cheap! On the first night, I got a DELICIOUS 8oz filet cooked medium rare for $9.95. You can’t beat that at Outback!

3) Red wine.We also discovered that wine here was very cheap and enjoyed multiple bottles of delicious South American wine for $10 a bottle.

Things I didn’t like so much:

1) The drinks the bartenders make at the bars. For only $2.50 I got what I THOUGHT was Bacardi & Diet one night at the Casino, only to find out that enough Diet was used to change the color of the drink from a clear liquid to one that was just barely a shade of brown. My Spanish being described as limited at best, I had a lot of trouble communicating to the bartender that I wanted him to pour the whole drink into a bigger glass and add more Diet to it. He looks at me and goes “more Bacardi?” and proceeds to somehow pour MORE Bacardi into my glass. Ugh.

2) The heat/humidity. After a month of complaining about how cold Newport was, I find myself pining for the crisp air and strong breeze across the water. Despite being around lots of water, the Canal does not enjoy the luxury of wind that Newport does and it is unbearably hot, muggy, clammy & humid. The torrential downpour that occurs everyday in the lush green rainforest does not help.

Well, I suppose that temporarily ends my list of likes/dislikes of Panama City. Considering that we pull in here VERY frequently, I am sure I will come up with more things to add to this list over the course of deployment.

What else…. Well given that I have been gone for awhile, I’m not really sure what’s going on around here. We have all of these new people (Air Det, Coasties, etc) so I feel like I’m on a brand new ship! A lot of my friends on the boat are leaving soon which really bums me out; it is sad to see your friends leave you L

As far as what we’re doing, we’re out here getting directed around to (hopefully) find lots of drug running vessels & intercept them. We’ve currently have ~$ ½ million in cocaine and other illegal commodities onboard and are definitely hoping for a LOT more!

For those of you who don’t really understand what I just graduated from, I spent a month in Newport, RI at the Surface Warfare Officer School. Newport scenery = beautiful. Newport food = delicious. Newport weather = not so great. We had 3 weeks of advanced shiphandling & advanced tactics, giving us all a chance to understand more about the surface warfare community, strike group operations, amphibious operations and general shiphandling- basically things that, depending on your ship & her mission, you may not be able to experience or learn on a day-to-day basis. The class was also preparation for my upcoming SWO board, basically the culmination of 18 very long months onboard, trying to learn everything about my community that I can. During your hour long board (and many hour long murder boards that precede your official board), you are drilled by the department heads, XO & CO until they deem that you are ready to join the ranks of Surface Warfare Officer. Hopefully, you will see me sporting a sweet gold surface pin by early December.

I have included in this post to Dan a picture of where our ship is, you can see the “Bridge of the Americas” which marks the entrance to the Canal on the Pacific side.

It is truly my goal to post to the blog more regularly & during slow times I hope to actually organize my thoughts (although let’s be serious, anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I can’t help 3-4 tangents in a short conversation) to some coherent ideas, thoughts & stories so you aren’t forced to read a novel that has very little direction or point.

As always, I can be reached @ mharris@ffg58.navy.mil. Love you all!