15 Days 'til I'm Outta Here....maybe

It's been a while since my last post, so I'll recap as best I can without getting long winded.

We have had a pretty busy last few weeks. We left Guam and headed West and South to the Phillipines. It took about 3 or 4 days to get to the Eastern side of the islands.

We then cut through the Phillipines to the Eastern side to the South China Sea to meet up with a couple Navy ships to give them some supplies and fuel. After that was over, we went South back through the Phillipines to the South Eastern side. There we met up with an MSC contract ship that exclusively works with special forces and delivered fuel and ammo to them.

The wind in this area is practically non-existent, making for areas where the water is smoother than glass. We are semi-close to the equator (going between 6-8 degrees latitude) so its pretty warm out. It gets so bright outside that between the flat calm waters and the bright sky, you can see so far its hard to see where the water ends and the sky begins.

One thing about the Phillipines is that the fisherman here are absolutely fearless...to the point of suicidal. They will come and stop dead in front of us at less than a mile just to keep us from running over some unseen fishing gear. We try to dodge the fishing gear as much as possible, but we can only do so much.

After we unrepped with the special forces ship we cut back through the Phillipines yet again and came out to the South-Eastern side and steamed for a few hundred miles. We wouund up a few hundred miles to the East of Singapore. Every time we made a cut through the Phillipines, we had to go through some narrow straits and post some guys on the bridge with rifles for a pirate watch....however, nothing excited ever happened and I didn't get to fight any pirates. Damn!

When we got to our point a few hundred miles East of Singapore yesterday, we met up with another AKE (the exact same type of ship I'm on..the Wally Schirra). We pulled up next to them and sent wires across and started transferring our ammo to them...which is a pretty good amount.

When we are done doing this, we will head back North East to Subic Bay, Phillipines...where we are slated to pull into on May 10th.

So thats what I've been up to lately. Its been pretty busy, I've been working 18 hour days pretty consistently. It's gonna be nice to pull into port after 22 day stretch at sea...the whole crew could use some nice R&R.

There is still no relief identified for my May 10th relief date. I won't be surprised if I'm on here at least until we pull into Singapore on the 18th or 19th of May....maybe even around the first week in June when we pull back into Singapore.  Though I could find out May 9th that someone is out to relieve me. My timing wasn't the greatest, the summer relief season is about to begin. But I'm at the point where I'm tired and need some vacation time.