Gaby’s Blog: The start of sailing the 7 seas.
- Published on Monday, 06 February 2012 22:59
- Category: Opinions
Underway. Shift colors.
The Lawe slowly moves out of the pier. This is my first time to be onboard a ship, a destroyer at that, going to sea. Most if not all the ship’s equipment were in operation so there were all kinds of sounds that I heard. There was sadness for those who had to leave their families. The pier was full of people waving goodbye to us as we wave back to them. I was full of excitement especially it was my first underway and I looked forward to how things would be at sea.
We were now in the open sea and I felt the ship movements. The seas were calm so it was only rolls that the ship made. I remember my Pinoy friends told me to be ready because I will soon hate the Navy and wished to be home. What they told me meant nothing until the sun had set. Once darkness came, all hatches leading outside the skin of the ship had to be tightly closed and red lights were turned on to light the passageways. No white lights to be seen onboard at night, even the bridge light were red.
I could not explain how I felt after a couple of hours but maybe it showed in my face and the old timers knew that I was starting to get seasick. Some were making jokes that I will soon be in love with the head(CR). I heard that a Midshipman started visiting the head and another one who just checked in onboard was embracing the commode.
Taps Taps, the word was passed in the 1MC, it was time to hit the rack but I had the feeling of throwing up. After sometime I was unable to hold myself and got up and went straight to the head. Seasickness got me, I started puking as soon as I reached one of the commodes in the head assigned to our division. The puking went all night long and true enough I wanted to go back home and forget the Navy. I knew now what my Pinoy friends had told me earlier meant. I felt so bad the whole day but there was work to be done. Seasickness was part of a sailor’s life so I had to accept how things were. I did whatever assigned work I had to do and ran to puke to the closes head. After a few days going thru the rough way of life of being seasick, I started to feel better and I did not throw up anymore. Some of the old timers onboard greeted me, that I was now a salty sailor. I was proud of myself that time and I forgot about home or getting out of the Navy. Things were doing well until one old salt told me that the North Atlantic was the roughest waters he ever experienced. That made me more wanted to be back at home to get away from getting sick again.
I was feeling good then, so I had the chance to walk outside the skin of the ship and watched the beauty of the ocean. There was a time we saw a couple of whales and freighters on their way to deliver cargos. We had drills and man-over-board was the drill the ship’s crew must know by heart in this cruise because there were so many of us who were new onboard. In this drill we learned to follow traffic rules in order not to bump into each other running to get to our man overboard stations, especially that we had three minutes to make it. The traffic route was, go aft in port and go forward in starboard, go down the starboard side and go up the port side. There were over 200 crewmembers moving onboard a destroyer to reached their stations, so the Navy came up with the traffic rules to expeditiously move the crowd. Those on watch stayed in their stations but their names were delivered to their respective life raft stations. The assigned life raft was tightly secured to the bulkhead but can easily be released to be of use. While we are gathered in the area where our life raft is located we had a briefing on how to release the life raft. The content of the life saving storage and how to use the content was a very important for us to know so the leader in our group briefed us on that. We were brief on how to safely go down to the water to get to our life raft.
Another drill we went through were fire drills. The main worry of ships are onboard fires so the crew had to be ready for these events. Each member of the ship had a responsibility to do during these drills, the fire teams were manned ASAP like in one minute and those who are not members of the team must ensure the ship’s air tight/water tight integrity. Drills were done like there was really a compartment on fire. The only thing that was not done was turning on the water valves.
General Quarters was a drill that took longer especially during anti submarine operations. My assigned space was the wardroom and I felt lucky being assigned to this air conditioned space. The rest in my group were assigned to the gun mounts. When the drill lasted the whole day we served box lunches to all the stations. I helped out prepare boxes for each stations in the galley and a messenger from each stations came to us to pick up their lunch boxes. In a short time at sea I felt good experiencing all the drills that could happen even at night. What I had gone thru those few days were just plain dreams I had during my younger years up in the mountains of Baguio.
Garbage was thrown over the side, astern of the ship, I was scared to dump the garbage cans of my working spaces but in time I was able to get over the fear after a couple of times dumping the garbage can. The ship’s propeller splashes sea water all over as it turned. There was no plastic bags then so we actually emptied garbage cans then washed them clean. It took two men to dump the garbage cans in the scullery, in the galley and in the mess decks. The discharges from the heads were all flushed out of the skin of the ship above the water line. There were big fishes that swam along with the ship and maybe they fed on the waste. Out in the open seas there were a lot of flying fishes and some of them even land on the ship’s deck. I grew up in the mountains so birds were the only living thing that I saw flying. I enjoyed the sea when it was calm.
The scuttlebutt going around was, we will be headed to Portugal. There was excitement onboard and we all looked forward to a good liberty. The Portugal visit day came but it was only for a day, we anchored and no liberty. We could see the city close to the sea, this was the closes I had been to Portugal. There were several small boats that came along side the ship to sell souvenirs. The crew spent a lot buying bandannas, handkerchiefs and scarf souvenirs. The souvenirs embroidered and made of very fine materials. I can not remember what material they were made of. I bought some handkerchiefs and had them be sent home.
We left Portugal and headed to the open seas again. I was looking forward to rough seas like what one of the old salts told me. I was cleaning the sea cabin of the captain one day and the captain entered to get some papers. We had a few minutes talk and I asked him about the rough seas I was looking forward to that scared me. He laughed and told me that we already crossed the North Atlantic Ocean. The rough seas will be when we head back home, it will be fair winds and fair weather until we reach The Netherlands. The captain told me that he will manage the ship so we can view the White Reef of Dover as close as he could do it when we go thru the English Channel.
That was the first time I chatted with the captain and the more I got my confidence being part of the US Navy. There were other occasions he talked to me and it was not only about the ship we talked about. I bring coffee to him when he was in the bridge and there were times he was seated in the captain’s chair. I took the liberty to walk around the bridge and tried to learn how things were in that area of the ship. There were at least four men on watch aside from the captain, the OOD, the Boatswain’s Mate of the watch, a messenger and the man steering the ship. Normally when the seas are calm and there was no operations going on, the bridge was a quiet place especially if the captain was around.
There was an underway refueling we had when we were crossing the North Atlantic Ocean and I delivered the captain’s coffee to the bridge. I was surprised to see the place crowded and each one doing what was necessary to keep the ship maintain speed and direction to prevent a collision. I stayed in one corner and observed the operation in the bridge. I saw a Signal Man and a Quarter Master at the signal bridge. Messengers come and go from other areas delivering messages to the captain and OOD. I heard verbal orders given to respective watches and phone talkers passing information. The sailor is not just a person who looks good in uniform, he is a professional in his own field of responsibility. The refueling operation was over and the oiler moves away and so with us. It did not take hours to get refueled, not even an hour.
We were now entering the English Channel leaving the Celtic Sea, England to our port side and France to our starboard side. The channel was so calm and the captain made sure that the crew was able to get a good view of the White Reef of Dover. It was an uneventful cruising thru the English Channel and before we knew it we were already out of the channel and on our way to the Netherlands. (to be continued)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLbfqXQybw click on the url to view the USS William C Lawe in a refueling operations. I was onboard her in this operation. Thanks to podunlap2198 who uploaded this video in YouTube. This was my first MedCruise.
