Monday, January 12, 2009

On the upside, given the amount of time it's been since I last wrote an entry in my ever faithful blog, on average, I haven't been up to too much. Unfortunately for me, it's all been packed into the last few days. Thursday the 9th of January, we headed out of Pearl Harbor to basically sail in a big circle and wait for UNREPs. We had one UNREP on Friday, during which I was told to man the radio. Eep! Scary stuff. I'd only seen people holding the radio. I had no idea what to do! Luckily, I made it through alright with just a few bumps, and no bruises. Saturday and Sunday were my days off and spent almost entirely sleeping. With a few hours for sea projects and the rest was spent conquering the terrible chore of watching movies, reading books, and writing. Woe is me.
Over the weekend we were told that since we have a new chief mate on board, he wants us to report at 0800 for deck work. Luckily for us, the bosun doesn't really like having us mess up his projects, so he usually just looks at us for a second and says, "Yeah, I don't really have anything for you guys..." and we quickly disappear. This morning, however, we were captured by the second mate, who told us to go read the lifeboat manuals before the Fire and Boat Drill this afternoon. So we congregated in the lounge, skimmed the manuals, and generally made it last as long as possible. Then later today we had our Fire and Boat Drill. I dutifully reported to my station and helped the designated guys suit up in their fire suits. Then those of us who don't dress out for the fire awkwardly follow along as they make their way to the "fire" and "put it out." Then we return to our station and help them get out of their gear. Woohoo. The Boat part of the drill is equally as exciting. Everyone reported to their lifeboat (Lifeboat 3. Woo!) in steel-toed boots, long sleeves, and with a hat and reviewed launching procedures etc. The exciting part came after the drill itself when we actually launched the lifeboats... with people in them. I was in Lifeboat 3, which we launched first. It was an interesting ride, but we apparently forgot to take into account the large swell we've been having all day... oops. We banged into the hull of the ship so many times, I kind of thought we were going to crush the boat. We did nothing of the sort, and made it back up just fine. A little bit of an adventure though. All sorts of UNREPs tomorrow. In fact, we're going to be dealing with two ships at the same time, one on either side! Wish me luck. Aloha!

Alyssa

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