Stretching the Sea Legs

Many plans have been made, thrown away, and made again...and then changed many more times since my last posting.

We pulled into Guam to load some pretty top secret and expensive cargo quickly. We pulled into Guam in the afternoon and were throwing off the mooring lines at 8 am sharp the next morning and made a course for Yokosuka, Japan with hopes of actually making it there before the Navy changed their minds once more.

The first couple days of the trip were filled with the standard glorious South Pacific weather which I made the most of basking out on deck reading books in my off time. Then we hit the Phillipine Sea where the waters turned from pristine blue to the more depressing grey of the seas that surround Japan and the rest of this region.

We hit some pretty lively weather, with winds reaching 65 knots in force (75 knots is a weak Cat 1 hurricane winds for perspective). The seas kicked up to about 20 feet on the bow and the ship was rolling and pitching nicely accordingly. On one of my night watches we were getting it pretty good, with the engines making speed for 15 kts and we were lucky to be making 8. The bow would rise up above a wave and then launch into the trough of the next, causing a deluge of water to come shooting over the decks and up to bridge windows. The whole house would shake violently until the bow would dig out of the water and start making her way up the wave. The whole thing was really quite impressive.

We finally got inland to Japan where we were somewhat better sheltered and we pulled into Yokosuka with calm weather and the front that caused the ruckus well to our East. We started cargo operations quickly and were pulling up the anchor the following morning for Sasebo. This time, we could take our time getting to Sasebo, and we made for about 10 kts of average speed.

It seemed like every time I came onto watch, a signal went out to all surrounding vessels to come and mess with the Perry. I was constantly battling traffic every watch. At one point we cut through a fishing fleet that must have consisted of a few hundred boats; it looked like land was ahead of us at times on the radar. It was a pretty good experience to have,though with a price of a hefty headache after each watch.

We pulled into Sasebo the other day. I don't know too much about our future schedule. We will be getting a new Capt here in a few days and then we are going to be running with a battle group of several ships while they conduct target practice somewhere of Japan. We will fuel them and give them ammo while they conduct operations. I think thats supposed to last most of March with us ducking into Sasebo every now and then for overnights.

Sometime in April we will be back in Guam, and then sometime in May we might be dumping our ammo and taking up food stores and supplies and doing runs to the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.  But all that is wildly scheduled to change. For now I'm enjoying this brief rest in Sasebo.