A Sailor's Life

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Saturday, December 01, 2007

A long rest...
Yes, I took a long rest from posting on my blog. I'd been posting pretty faithfully for the past 3 and a half years, but once I got to the end of the last deployment, I had to take a break.

Since July when I posted about going home for the summer for a couple of weeks, we have gone on a couple little excursions down to Mayport or up to Annapolis. The ship has been busy, and we wish that we could get more time in port.

We went down to the south Florida area for a big exercise with a number of other ship's and submarines. During last deployment the Mahan got an award called the "Bloodhound" award, and we are able to fly a special white flag with a bloodhound on it that very few ships get to fly. Because we got that award, we were selected to go down to the Carribean for a couple of weeks to participate in an exercise where we play war games with a number of other submarines. We were mostly successful at winning the war against the submarines, but we got "shot" at a couple of times by the "enemy" too. More than once we went weaving through the water as we simulated an emergency evasion of a torpedo in the water.

Our trip up to Annapolis was merely for a Navy game that we were selected to be at. Most of the ship would have preferred to stay in Norfolk, and I know that I had better things to do. I don't usually follow or get too excited about sports, so football isn't all that amazing to me. We were there for a weekend and then returned to Norfolk.

One of the biggest reasons that I'm writing this post though is because I was selected to go on a special assignment with another ship. This particular ship is not a regular Navy ship. It is manned by civilians, and it is a United States Naval Ship (USNS) instead of a regular USS ship like the Mahan. The ship is called the USNS Prevail, and it is a Training Support Vessel. It was something else once upon a time, but the Navy recently converted it to help support boarding operations. Basically what this ship does is toprovide a boarding platform for other ships. We will have multiple boarding teams come on board so that they can practice boarding unfamiliar vessels.

Originally, I was selected to come on board this ship so that I could assist them with their communications equipment that provides them with Internet and phone lines. There is a civilian on board that is capable of configuring all of the communications systems on board, but they wanted me here so that I could support the civilian with any problems that may happen while we are underway.

Right now we are underway near the southern US coast, and we will soon begin operations with many other ships that are out here to help with the boarding exercises that everyone is participating in. I will pretty much be staying out of the way while actual boarding teams are on the ship, and if I got in their way, they would probably handcuff me and search me. They have to look for possible "intelligence" that the ship has, and if you get in their way, they have to search you. If it were a real situation where you were actually searching an enemy vessel for intelligence, then I'm sure that they would go into every space, but here there are certain off-limits areas. They can only search the allowed areas, since we are a friendly ship, and the captain wouldn't appreciate the boarding team bagging up all of his belongings in his stateroom. :)

So far we haven't had any major problems with the Internet communications gear, and my job has been pretty quiet. Since I am the only ET on board though, and the Captain rarely actually has a technician on board, he asked me to go through the rest of the communications gear and perform any alignments or diagnose any equipment problems that he might have. So over the past couple of days, I've been going through the maintenance cards that he has on board for all the equipment and determining what I'll be able to work on. This coming week I will spend plenty of time doing alignments and whatever work I can do with the test equipment and tools that are on board.

So that's my new adventure. I will try to enjoy this time that I have on a new and different ship, but in all honesty I would rather be back in Norfolk enjoying the apartment that I need to add furniture to. I guess I that I haven't probably ever mentioned that before, but yes, I got an apartment after this past deployment. Myself and another ET share the rent, and I have enjoyed just having a place of my own. I have a couch and a bed and a couple of tables, but other than that it is pretty empty.

I hope that the people that used to get this blog's posts haven't completely forgotten about me, but I'm still around. My current email address on this ship is spenceri@prevail.navy.mil That email address will only work for the next couple of weeks that I am on this ship, but I would love to get some email from people that I have not heard from in a long time.
- posted by Isaac @ 5:26 PM - Permanent Link

Comments:

Isaac, we are thinking of you and your shipmates this holiday season and we Thank You for your service to our country. We pray God's richest blessings on each of you.

# posted by

Granny Annie : 7:51 AM