January 5

Good morning everyone

I think it's morning for you? Its around 1920 for me here. It’s weird seeing Sunday afternoon football on Tuesday morning when you wake up. We finally finished the UNREPS we did the past 2 days. No supplies taken aboard just refueling two of our destroyers. I didn’t do anything to help mind you. I just watched while painting lol. I haven’t been able to jump in on the unreps, and with some port calls looming in the future, we have a lot of work to get done on the more visible areas of the ship.

So for us that means lots of chipping and sanding and painting and non-skid deck laying. Oh non-skid how I love thee. See on all deck areas we lay this thick goop with gravel in it that forms this super rough texture called non-skid which as its name suggests, completely prevents and form of slippage. It is literally impossible on this stuff, no matter how much grease, jet engine lube or fuel is all over the deck. Its also so rough you it kind of hurts to simply sit down on it. Anyway, it's next to impossible to lay down neatly so that’s what I’ve been doing.

Otherwise everything falls into a pretty good routine here. I’m almost qualed for watch. My Over Instructor (Crabtree actually if you remember that facebook picture you asked me about mom/dad) actually looked up what a helmsman would make on say a cruise ship or a merchant marine ship. HOLY COW. Now I realize that salary is because they have something like a 2 year journeyman’s program for your average able seaman in the merchant marine. But it's kind of ironic how in less than a month I’m about to be qualified to drive a carrier. WHILE PLANES LAND!! Another 2 months or so I could get my master helmsman qual which would allow me to drive while we do unreps (it's insane how close we have to keep to the other ship btw) or during mooring etc. So there’s that. Oh and I think I mentioned this but I’m already driving during flight ops which is to put it bluntly, unnerving as heck. Its just a lot of pressure sometimes.

What else on the day to day life of me? I have a bunch to write about what we will soon be doing but again you boys and girls can’t be privy to that for national security reasons. Once again I’m free for any question you may desire about stuff.

Oh there’s something to talk about. We basically have 3 types of people: airdales, ships company and engineering (which is part of ships company but is like their own separate thing).

Airdales are the skittles. The guys in the rainbow colored shirts that fix, fuel and arm the planes. They are annoying as hell and tend to think the ships soul purpose is for them (which I hate to admit it is). Aviation Ordinance is probably close to the most annoying. They like their little “If you aint ordinance you ain’t s#$t” and “we put warheads on foreheads” cheerleader chants. For one, the former slogan is just bad grammar and #2 no you don’t put warheads on the aforementioned foreheads. You put the warheads on the planes and then the pilots fly and drop the bombs and the guy radioing in the airstrike puts it on the foreheads. Not to mention we have a trained and qualified Explosive Ordinance Disposal team onboard (you know the guys who work with the SEALs?). So what’s that tell you? The United States Navy distrusts the professional skills of our ordinance department so much that they felt the need to bring a bomb disposal squad onboard to hedge their bets.

Ships company is just that. The people who work and keep the ship afloat, navigation, personnel and admin, deck and all the other departments that operate the ship day to day. Basically the “sailor” rates and jobs.

Engineering deals with making the ship GO. They also fix the ships equipment like the water purifiers and firefighting equipment and all that stuff. They exist in the bowels of the ship and rarely see sunshine. Generally regarded as just being strange in their own special way. Engineers are just weird.

Well so there you go. I hope you guys have a wonderful week
Alex