8/19
We are gone now. We did a passex (passing exercise of opportunity) with the Croatians that I have no idea what happened for us. There was a formation steaming and an officer exchange thing. I was asleep this afternoon so I didn’t participate. Had aft steering for sea and anchor. I’ll tell you about the last day in port later. I need to go back to bed before the midwatch in engineering. Have a few days at sea now until we stop next.

8/17
Liberty was fun. Bought jewelry in town and walked around then went to eat (steak, fries, mozzarella and tomato appetizer, olives, cheese, and prosciutto, gelato) and out to dance. Didn't go to the beach. Maybe tomorrow after tour after we shop some more. I was sleeping this afternoon when Ana left so we didn't meet up for me to get her phone, but she has off ship capabilities with her phone. I'll call tomorrow or the next day on her phone.

8/16
WE ARE IN SPLIT, CROTIA now. Waiting for liberty to go down. About to go change and pack to go out and maybe go to the beach, do some shopping, eat dinner and relax. I have duty tomorrow . I will be the Force Protection Officer or the Anti- Terrorism Watch Officer which is 6 on and 6 off, port and starboard. We are in charge of all the force protection watches. We have OOD, POOW, MOOW, Chief of the Guard, 2 Pier Senturies, a brow watch, 2 topside rovers, and then the host nation provided a security boat and then 2 other watch standers on the land with machine guns. I will wear a 9mm walking around all day tomorrow through the ship.

Time here is 2:19 on 16aug. We should be I think 6 hhrs ahead. -2B time zone. I was helm safety this morning during the first half of the navigation detail before they set the full out sea and anchor detail. That was from 430-9am. Then I took an hour nap and manned the rails on the focsle. It is really hot here.

More later.

8/14
Full night of sleep tonight. 7-12 am bridge watch. Just got off the 5-10 eoow watch. Wasn’t too productive… as before. Don’t feel very well. I think I have fever. I did go see 2B main engine where they drained the oil out of it and were making a repair and I found and looked around the a/c and reefer rooms that we have. Then I sat in the chair as eoow and answered the sound powered phone and logged stuff. I also went through the stack of logs that they look at and wrote down what all they were and read about how to make diesel engines more efficient. I guess actually I was productive now that I think about it.

I was OOD on the 2-7 this morning and we went through half the strait of sicily. Lots of traffic. I had to call the co like 10 times probably. The merchants wouldn’t really answer to me (because they do not hear a woman's voice that often!!) so I had to make the jood do it that is a guy. He didn’t know what to say so I had to go back and forth and tell him what to say. I must have had at least 30 contacts on the navigation radar that we were tracking. We had the NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) to see outside in the dark which helped a lot until we were on the port bridge wing looking through them and I looked up and there was a contact in front of us with a green and red light and a mast head light. Obviously they turned on their lights when we got closer.. then I saw a red light.. so I yelled into the bridge right full rudder .. we were going 18 kts. We missed hitting the boat probably by like 500 yds or so. I couldn’t even tell the capt until like 5 min later after we deconflicted the situation with 2 other merchants that were going to cross our bow. Our track that was laid out wasn’t with the traffic separation scheme.. so we were dodging contacts left and right and ended up way off track and then I knew I had to cut back down because there were some ship wrecks and shoal water out ahead like 12 nm. By this time the capt and nav and qmc (Chief Quartermaster) were on the bridge and we were all able to figure out what to do. I was trying for the past like 45 min to cut due south in between the ships, but they kept coming. We were finally able to figure out how to do it.

They had the force protection brief and the port visit brief tonight on site tv for our next port. Should be a good time. Haven’t had much time to research the place too much and still don’t know what time we are pulling in. I know I am not on the watchbill though for it. Yay! I wonder how traffic will be in the morning as we cut up north through the med…

Going to take a shower now. Time changes again tonight at 2-3.. so we will be 6 hrs ahead of you. +2B I think is the time zone?? It is 2 hrs ahead of zulu.

Ok. I need to catch up on my paperwork a little tomorrow and start working on my transfer eval and award. Got an email from admin to pick up the transfer package but I went down there today and no one was there b/c it was when we were trying to set up for GQ. Yes, we did a GQ scenario today in 5th fleet . The bridge and CIC manned up but did not participate, they paid attention to the real world picture.

Some of the other ships we are with were traveling behind us by like 75 nm or so and got querried by an African country’s frigate that came about 1 nm away from them with some small boats at a high rate of speed. They set WP 1 surface.. I guess that is the news for today.

We are getting second anthrax shot tomorrow!!

8/12
We are through the straits of Gibraltor and in the med. Prob detaching from KSG and the others to proceed to our port in Croatia.. hopefully before tonight. I don't think I told you about the unrep the other day that I was OOD. The Big Horn was the oiler and the KSG and us were pulling up to it at the same time, which was obviously very tight. The USS Porter went ahead of us on the stbd side of the big horn. Ponce, Vicksburg, and USS Carr all refuled too after us. But we had a simultaneous vertrep going on as well. As usual. Pretty intense, but everything went ok. Wish I could have taken a picture from one of the helos! Would have been pretty good. Got a picture of the Moroccan coast this morning and what I could of Gibraltor. Couldn't really see to well on that side. I wasn't on the"Special watchbill". The ood was the one that was supposed to be on watch anyway on the bridge but there was a helm safety, etc added. I had watch in main control this morning and learned about the HPAC, A/C, refrigeration. Have the midwatch tonight. It is 203pm here now zulu time still 4 hrs ahead. Tonight we change the clocks ahead again at 2am it will be 3am. So tomorrow we will be 5 hrs ahead. Pretty congested with cold. Took some of the Tylenol cold I brought. About to go take a nap again before dinner now that I did some paperwork. We are still at flight quarters as a ready deck.

8/11
Going through Gibraltor tomorrow morning. Manning up a modified sea and anchor detail. We will be in a column with 4 helos flying. Have a really bad headache, just chugged some water. Missed the ice cream social and movie night since I was one watch. I found some mint choc chip in the freezer a minute ago left over as a brand new carton so I ate a few scoops. Also just had a campbell's chunky soup.

Pretty much it. I slept for 12 hrs last night. I didn't go to my engineering rev watch as u/i. I was really tired and sore from the unrep which ended 6 hours before I was supposed to have the rev. I think I might be getting sick with a cold. A lot of people have one. I have a stuffy nose and sore throat and bad headache too.. so I was trying to sleep for that too. Need to check the pod(Plan of the Day)- wonder when strog transit begins. I want to try and get a good picture this time.. last time it was too cloudy to get both spain and morocco in the pic. I think we also change time zones maybe tonight.. so I need to verify that too.. it would be -1 from zulu, so 5 hours difference from you. I am 4 hours ahead now. It is 1145 here.



8/10
No picture taken today. They canexed due to weather. We were going in and out of rain squalls. This afternoon I took a nap for a few hours. Then we had the nav/ops/intel/condition 1a/ ciws pacfire/vbss boarding/helo ops/ unrep brief. Lasted about 1 hr 15 min. I have the unrep tomorrow afternoon as OOD... weather and schedule changes permitting. It is supposed to be at 1300 but then it just got changed to 1500. We are also doing a vertrep (vertical replenishment - helo) following it for ammo and toilet paper transfer. Later, I was in Main Control for the Main Space Fire drill.
Just got off watch in Main. I watched them clean the lube oil pump strainers for the MRG (Main Reduction Gear) and then I went around with the Oil Lab watchstander to take water samples and then did the alkalinity, phosphate, and carbon test on the evap/ boiler feed water. Time zones change again. We are at zulu as of 0200 it is 0300 again. It is now 0357. Need to go to bed so I can get up for bfast at 7 then will go to bed until unrep. I have watch 1145-1645 which is during the unrep. After the brief tonight the capt said he wanted a small boat brief. I am making the new girl do it with the help of the old 1st divo who is now assistant first lt. We will go through the STROG (Straits of Gibralter) on Sunday. NO brief yet. Either tomorrow or the next day.
We haven't gotten mail yet. Ok. Bed time.

8/4
Watch was very busy today. 12-17. flight quarters with tons of passenger problems trying to figure out who was going where. The xo came up a few times. We also had to do a MIO(Maritime Interdiction Operation) query of another ship. I only had one other officer on the bridge during this so we had 2 major things going on at once. He talked on bridge to bridge (radio) doing the other query while I did flight quarters. He had to answer questions and pretend we were a cargo ship. He used an accent and everything. It was funny. He said we had 1 giraffe, 15 monkies, a camel, and 2 dogs. Trying to access the Navy Knowledge Online course I have to do for mine warfare online. The site is hard to get to come up. We are still on eastern time zone. We will be changing the clocks tonight ahead at 0200-0300. So, tomorrow we will be an hour ahead of you.

There is a storm out here-- I think we are almost halfway across the atlantic. Still on 078 as course for like 270 nm. Haha. Trying to get this site to work and then have watch in eoow (Engineering Officer of the Watch) at 2-7 or really 3-7. Then OOD tomorrow night from 22-02.

Oh, THEY MADE US GET THE FIRST IN SERIES OF ANTHRAX SHOTS TODAY. ANOTHER IN 2 WEEKS. ANOTHER 2 WEEKS LATER. I still had to get it b/c I’ll be in 5th fleet with the ship for a bit.

8/3
Watch was better today. They had a quick draw gun shoot from 6-7 so we woke up to guns shooting. That was pretty much over with when I got up there. There was a round that got stuck in one of the mounts and they got it out ok. We are in a screen kilo with true bearings now transiting. When I was on watch we were at least 300 miles from land on course 073. We didn't have much to do during my watch so I got the stuff ready for the next watch. They were going to do zigzag patterns. So, I went through with our base course and had the jood (Junior Officer of the Deck) and conn (conning officer-one telling helmsman what course to steer) get all the new courses for 2 hrs of the ones listed. Port from base course by 30 degrees so it would be 073 minus 30. They made a list for that all. They were also tagging out one of the generators and switching some of those around. It ended up that I must have called the captain like at least 6 times. Had a break now trying to access nko online, having problems, there is a local site on the LAN that is supposed to transfer over but it is not working right now. I just called radio a- bout it. They are securing the LCUs (large landing craft) with 4 more wire lines before tomorrow night b/c I guess we are supposed to be driving through some weather. So, if you see that on the radar, that is where we are. We did a second man overboard (drill) today since people are so slow. We have becces (basic engineering casualty control exercises) tonight and then also a general quarters. I have engineering watch from 10pm -2am. Going to try and take a nap either before or after dinner. They have the navy auto source onboard selling cars, talked with him a bit about what they do. I'm obviously not buying a car though. Did an unrep yesterday.

8/1
Underway, heading east toward the Mediterranean with the other ships in our group. Well learning lots in engineering. Observed evolutions today with the engineering training team. Got a bunch signed off on pqs (personal qualification standards). Went down for part of the unrep (underway replenishment) but not all like I wanted because I talked with ops and osc too long.

Had the rev watch and was turned over a screen kilo with the other 2 ships (Kearsage and Ponce). All of us are relearning watch standing procedures and a few are making mistakes!


7/31
Arrrived Morehead City pierside and onloaded USMC. Spent the night inport on the ship loading.

7/30
Underway from Little Creek in a storm....others were delayed a few hours. Enroute to Morehead City, NC to pick up USMC part.