WATC is going well. (West African Training Cruise). I will include another article I wrote for "All Hands" Magazine shortly on our visit to Conakry,Guinea and the impact our ship had there. Basically there hadn't been a US ship there in many years and when we came we thought they were going to be able to sail around and "play with us" however their ships were unable to get underway. The engineers onboard helped them tremendously with fixing their engines and giving training. It was obvious we contributed quite a bit to their Navy and built the way for future interactions with diplomatic relations and building friendships. Ghana was pretty cool. They speak English there... in Guinea they spoke French and knew very little English so it was hard to translate with limited number of translators. Ghanaians were very welcoming and professional. We conducted operations with 3 of their ships sucessfully and hosted a handful of their officers onboard while they were here. They were very outgoing and eager to meet people and learn things. They of course offered us the opportunity to visit in the future. We did have an opportunity for limited amount of liberty on the afternoon we pulled into port/ I toured Elmira Slave Castle. It is the first and largest slave castle built in W. Africa during the slave trade. It is where they would bring the Africans for holding extensive time periods, for death, and ultimately for a journey to the US. The Portuguese were the first to build it and then turned it to Britain rule and then to Ghana ultimately. It has been used for the slave trade, a church, police training center, etc. It was a very beautiful place but extremely ominous. I bought a book that covers all the slave castles of the Coast. It is really interesting so far because it covers the various different types of architecture and the origin of all the castles. It is right on the coast with palm trees and all and it is hard to imagine such a horrible thing happening there. We were only supposed to stay out until 1730 but our liberty was extended until 2100. I got a long bus tour of Ghana that is for sure. It was 1.5 hrs to the castle from our ship. Once we were leaving there we found out liberty was extended so we then proceeded to the resort hotel that we were allowed to go to. These were the only approved liberty locations and our buses we rode in had armed Ghanaian soldiers to escort us through the countryside. The hotel was really nice. But it was a 2hr bus ride as well since it was about 45 min in the other direction from our ship. By the time we backtracked and drove here and there it seemed to take forever. I got some really cool pictures of the natives... women carrying stuff on their heads.. etc. This was the night that the crazy things started happening to people on the ship and onboard. As we were getting ready to leave someone reported that one of the Deck Seamen was missing. This was not a good thing. The last person with him was a girl and they got in a fight on the beach and he kept walking while he was drunk and the girl came back. IT took about a half hour to sort things out. It was me and Jay Sonhi, one of the other officers that were the only officers there to figure things out. The worst thing was that the cell phones they issued us decided to only work periodically so we had to sit and wait to get a hold of the ship, etc. We ended up being a half hour late past liberty expiration that night but the guy was found. He was reportedly walking aimlessly through the local streets drunk. The 5 people we left behind with an armed Ghanaian soldier found him shortly after the 2 busses and van left in convoy by my and Jay's direction back to the ship. Not sure the exact consequences though on the guy's part but I know of many things that both he and a few people can get written up for. So, that was the first thing. The second thing was last night there was a man overboard scare. People didn't know at first that it was real b/c we were preparing to cross the equator today. We thought it was the shellbacks playing a joke. I found out shortly after running in my pjs and tennis shoes to the bridge that it wasn't a drill because the Commodore that is embarked was freaking out on the bridge and no one knew where the muster sheet for the officers was. After I reported in, went down to Combat to supervise my space during the evolution. It ended up being a Chem light that the aftlookout spotted... but no one was there after we mustered the entire ship twice. It took forever to get a muster.. some people were working out and couldn't hear the announcement on the 1mc... so people were frantically looking for them and passing the word for them to come to the bridge to muster face to face and know they were onboard. Of course this manoverboard scare occured right as I was stepping into bed to sleep for a few hours before the Rev watch from 2-7 am. Needless to say right now I have only had 2 hours of sleep last night. Thirdly on my watch in Combat we got word over chat from our Tactical Commander to standby for a SAR mission (Search and Rescue Mission)/ There was a plane crash and our mission may get changed. We are standing by currently for further word. It was great because I got to tell the OOD on the bridge what was going on and then we got to wake up the Operations Officer, the CO, and the Commodore.. because that is standard procedure to do so when something that will affect the ship's mission occurs. We had to wake them up only about 45 min before their wakeup call anyway. That is all I can say about this. SHould be interesting...We woke them up early today because we were crossing the equator. For those of you that don't know.. the Navy has a tradition for when you cross the equator you get initiated as a Shellback from a Slimy Pollywog. I am now an Emerald Shellback since we crossed the 00 00 000N and 00 00 000E lines. This is the point where the Prime Meridian and the Equator meet. This is the most uncommon type of shellback since not many US ships go to this area in Africa frequently. The more common type of "special shellback" is the Golden Shellback on the other side of the world where the Prime Meridian (INternational Date Line) meets the equator. That is more common b/c of the frequency of US ships sailing the Pacific. The initiation was nothing like it used to be in the old days.. beating and all that... it was pretty tame but I was ready for it to be over by the end. It started off as a breakfast that was themed with Nasty sounding seafood. We had orange colored scrambled eggs, blue dyed bacon... some flouder that was green with spinach in it.. and "Cod Oil Juice" that was apple juice mixed with salt water. We made shirts and I stayed up late making mine.. All the Pollywogs were blue colored shirts and the Shellbacks and safety observers wore khaki colored. I can't really say what we did... but we had to wear our clothes backwards and inside out.. PT Gear.. and we got really wet by being sprayed with cold firemain hoses... we PTed, got colored waterput on us ... etc... We finally reached the shellback stage when we reached the "King" at the end which was the Ship's Bos'n... he has been a Shellback for the longest and we had to bow to him as he brought us into the Shellback realm. It was good fun. I was ready for it to be over b/c I was soaking wet and the sun wasn't out yet since it started at 0530... not enough heat yet.There is a cookout this afternoon ... Steel Beach picnic... and then late sleepers tomorrow. I am going to bed now since didn't sleep much last night... Will wake up for the barbeque this afternoon around 1500. I will probably eat then head backto bed or study. I have my CICWO board again on Wed. The three new ensigns boarded together and we all failed as a group. They were expecting us to know ridiculous stuff like a TAO would have to know. THere was no way we would pass. We think they were just messing with us. They really decide before they board us who will pass... and we determined they were not going to pass us from what they were asking.. they were just giving us a difficult time. Definitely by the end of deployment I will have this and all my other quals except for OOD which I should have this late Winter/ Spring. Pretty good I guess for being on the ship for less than 3 months. 5 days and I get to wear my sea service ribbon... I will have 2 full rows by this spring ...from the awards from deployment and when I get back qualifying in shooting rifle and pistol expert shooter that I think I can attain... I have done well at all the gun shoots so far. That 's all for now.. I will definitley keep this posted for if we are going to help do Emergency AID or if we are going to follow through with our previously assigned mission.