40 Days and 40 Nights
It’s been a crazy past couple of days. The weather has taken a serious turn for the worse. We have been in 15 foot+ seas for a couple days now and it’s really starting to take a toll on the crew. There are multiple typhoons in the area but we are doing our best to avoid them. Surprisingly I haven’t been sea sick, this kind of motion makes me really hungry though. My boss on the other hand is not handling the rough seas quite as well. Yesterday he had to go lay down in his rack during the middle of the day because it just was too much for him. No such relief for the peons. We are just a couple days out from Thailand and I got a liberty buddy. I don’t really know the guy but people say he is fun to hang out with so hopefully it goes well. We are going to ride some elephants and tour the city and have a few adult beverages. I also plan on getting some spa treatment and letting some little Thai girls walk on my back. We got a room at the Millennium resort in Patong Beach so I will be enjoying 2 full days on the island. I am really excited and looking forward to the visit especially since considering this morning I read that after Thailand we won’t be stopping until we reach Bahrain in mid November. 40 days straight out to sea is going to be pretty rough.
Yesterday I had Damage Control indoc which is a combination of classroom and real world scenarios in regards to fighting fires on board. The classroom part was ok, I kept myself awake and interested by taking mad notes during class. I must have written down every word DC3 was saying. Hopefully it works out for me because we have a test over the material and if I pass it, then it will allow me to bypass a whole bunch of other PQS and signatures and what not. In the afternoon we did some hands on training. We basically learned how to put on the fire fighting gear and go “on air” and “off air.” SCBA is a acronym from hell! It stands for Self Contained Breather Apparatus but it’s really a torture device disguised to look like an oxygen tank. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t have had it on for 4 hours while the ship was being tossed like a toy. Today my body feels like it got thrown down a flight of stairs. We have 2 more days of training but hopefully yesterday is the last time I will see SCBA’s for a while.
It’s definitely easier to meet people during the day and when you get out of radio. I met a couple new people who seem really nice and who I had seen around before but never talked to. I met a couple nice girls who are dating (each other) but I am still trying to make friends with a couple of the guys who I suspect are family.
Well time for quarters and then off to more damage control indoc. Hopefully it’s a little calmer today.
