I've Made It

Hello All-

This is the site I will be using to update everyone on my adventures and travels while working as a 3rd Mate in the Merchant Marine, presently with Military Sealift Command (MSC).


I pulled into Virginia Beach, Virginia on Saturday for new employee orientation (NEO). MSC has put us up here at the Double Tree hotel. There are around 35-40 people here for NEO. I'm not sure how many of us are licensed officer out of academies. About 20 of us had medical yesterday, where they pricked and prodded and all the good stuff to get us medically cleared to work. The other half had medical today.

Actual training starts on the 29th. We go through a week of paperwork and HR fun here in VA beach and then will go to Freehold, NJ. There we will have 7-9 more weeks of training in areas such as firefighting, small arms, radioactive/chemical/biological defense, etc. It's not the most exciting stuff, but just part of the process to get to a ship, which hopefully will happen by January.

Until training starts on the 29th, I'm just enjoying the town with a few fellow mates going through NEO as well. I'm the only Texan/TMA grad here. The two people I've been hanging out with the most are from Cal Maritime (CMA). Most of the others seem to be from the Merchant Marine Academy (Kingspoint) and Mass Maritime.

Thats about all I got for now....there really isn't anything too terribly exciting going on. We did get an earthquake earlier, as you've probably heard on the news. It was a 5.9 with the center about 60 miles north of us. I was in my hotel room and the whole building started rocking and swaying....it was a pretty weird feeling. 

Thats about all I got...hope y'all enjoy following the blog! Many thanks to Amy Trammell for setting this up and doing all the designs!

-Mike