December | 2011 | followthebradleys

Merry Christmas

by gabrielbradley

From Singapore, here’s wishing a Merry Christmas to all my friends and family back in the States.

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Yesterday we pulled into Singapore for a brief stop to off-load some people and on-load some supplies. The best part of the on-load was the 135 bags of inbound mail that we brought onboard. This was the first mail call of the deployment, and it definitely led to a boost in morale. All over the ship, people had big smiles on their faces as they opened big boxes full of goodies from home. There is now an absurd amount of junk food being passed around the ship.

Angelina and Gabby sent me a great care package with: a paperback copy of “Silence of the Lambs” (yay, I’ve never read it), a miniature cardboard Christmas tree, drawings by Gabby, an origami crane by Angelina, and a nice note. It’s like an early Christmas present, and none of it will rot my teeth, which is good. That was definitely a highlight of the month so far.

For the past five days or so, I have not been very busy. In an earlier post, I wrote about the disconnect between OPTEMPO (the pace of our operations) and ADTEMPO (the amount of paper that I am required to push). The current situation is a great example of that phenomenon. This week we are doing flight operations, landing-craft movements, and supporting various bilateral military exercises with partner countries. But my own workload has dropped from 12-18 hours of work every day to 6-8 hours of work every day. I still have to spend the same 24 hours on the ship, though. I tend to get bored, lonely, and sad when I don’t have a lot of work to do. When I’m busy I feel like there is a point to me being out here, like I’m doing something that matters. I actually feel less stressed when I spend every waking moment on a work-related task because I don’t have time to sit around missing home.

On the bright side, having that free time gives me a chance to catch up on my reading – most of it is work-related, but not all of it. Lately I’ve been on a Hemingway kick. The details of my non-work reading life are on my Goodreads.com profile, if for some reason any of you want to talk books.

Deployment

Land ho!

by gabrielbradley

Last Saturday, we stopped in Guam for a brief stop for fueling. Nobody went ashore except for line handlers and some people who needed to go to medical. But it was exciting just to see dry land for the first time in nine days, so lots of people came out on the catwalks and weather decks to take a look at the palm trees. We were fascinated by the dry land, as if this green-covered bump sticking out of the water was something worth celebrating. When the fueling was done, we pulled right back out and kept heading west.

Most of my workload for the last week has been giving advice on Law of the Sea (LOS). This is good because LOS is the part of my job that I enjoy the most. Yesterday was a big LOS day for us because we went through the Philippines, making it the first time on this deployment that we were in Transit Passage. Let me explain.

One of the basic LOS principles is that where you are in the world’s oceans determines what you are allowed to do. So you have different transit regimes – Innocent Passage, Transit Passage, High Seas Freedom, and more – depending on where you are in the world. Transit Passage is the regime, or set of rules, that applies when transiting an international strait. Yesterday, passing through the Philippines, we went from High Seas Freedom to Transit Passage, and then back again. Pretty exciting, huh?

But it actually was exciting to see the Philippines. In the morning I went outside and ran laps on the flight deck. It was beautiful: all three ships were steaming in formation, the sun was just starting to come up, and we were surrounded by beautiful islands. After breakfast, I went outside again to take some pictures. In the humidity, I got just as sweaty walking around the ship as I did when I had been running laps.

The other special thing that happened yesterday was the Pearl Harbor remembrance ceremony. On this side of the Date Line, yesterday was December 7 – the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Makin Island had a beautiful ceremony on the hangar deck. The USS Pearl Harbor, which is one of the ships in our group, also had a ceremony onboard. It seemed especially appropriate to have the ceremonies in the middle of the Philippines because of how much Naval history was made in the Philippines in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was a lot to reflect on as we continued our transit west, toward the waters where we will write our small part of the Navy’s story.