I have already been remiss in
writing, which I hope will not be the case for the coming months. Life, as you can imagine, has been pretty
hectic over the last few weeks. As we
pulled up lines in San Diego, we knew we wouldn’t be coming back for six
months. This deployment doesn’t have the
feel my first one had. I guess you could
say I’m one of the saltier people onboard.
Most of the ship has never deployed before, so the fact that I have a
full deployment under my belt gives me some experience that others lack. Luckily, most of the officers in the wardroom
are quite smart and capable, which shores up the gaps in experience.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m
the Navigator for a DDG (that is, Guided Missile Destroyer) currently deployed
to the Western Pacific. I’m not only in
charge of Navigation for the ship, but I manage a department of 3 divisions—navigation
(obviously), medical and admin. I have
about 20 sailors who work for the department, with an officer as well as a
handful of senior enlisted.
I’ve
already begun to lose track of time. The
weekly rhythm that most of America experiences seems to evaporate on
deployment. Since every day is exactly
the same, we don’t pay attention to weekends or weekdays. We even keep our own time as we switch time
zones, sometimes waiting for days before switching time zones, simply for
convenience. Interestingly, as the
Navigator, many things seem to fall to me.
I dictate those time shifts, follow weather (even though I have no
formal training), and plan important transits through sensitive areas. Much of the autonomy is quite nice. For those of you that have heard the news, we
are about 2 days behind the super-typhoon that just went through the Philippines. We’ve been following it quite closely, and
while the waves have gotten bigger, we’ve missed the dangerous parts.
I suppose I’ve
taken so long to update people because I’m not quite sure we are on
deployment. It still feels like I’ll be
pulling into San Diego soon, though that is a long way off. I already got my first care package (thanks
Mom!) and am settling in nicely. Days
are long, and we haven’t even gotten to the crazy parts of deployment,
including lots of transits near land and shoal water.
A week and
a half ago, we pulled into Hawaii. It
was my first real coup as Navigator. I
finagled our times to allow us to stay overnight, even though they just wanted
us to stop for some fuel. The crew was
quite happy. I went to Waikiki and,
while at a restaurant, ran into a group of friends from ROTC in college, some
of whom weren’t even stationed in Hawaii.
What a small world…
I have to
go to sleep before watch, but I’ve been putting off updates for too long. I will try to update more in the next few
days. I have some Guam adventures to
share, and pretty soon I’ll have some more stories as we near Asia. For now, enjoy America for me!
