Sunrise

I'm looking out the window right in front of my desk to a beautiful sunrise. The water is a multi-variate grey and silver, and the sky is a mottled grey, peach, yellow and light. 

There is barely a ripple of a breeze. Just a small swell, maybe 1-2 feet, is causing the water to rise and fall like an eternal heartbeat. 

It won't last for long like this -- in fact it's already changing. The peach is fading and being bleached out by the sun's intensity as it rises above the cloud behind which it's hiding. 

I must remember to soak in these moments and know that there are some things about being underway that I will always cherish.

Light Show

received 9-4-15

CO called me from the bridge last night to tell me there was an great light show
going on. We had been diverted from our regular patrol for SAR (search and rescue,
pronounced "sar"), so I knew I was going to be up later than I had originally
planned. I've never gotten a call from the bridge about an awesome light show,
so I quickly finished my email or whatever administrivia on which I was working
and made my way to the bridge.

There were storms off the starboard bow and off the starboard quarter. Great big
huge cumulonimbus anvil heads towering into the sky, that were being lit up from
the inside with massive bolts of lightning. Some of the lightning was streaking
crossways through the sky, but many bolts were striking crookedly down to the
earth's surface. And these were solid bolts -- not the wimpy kind that flash for
the briefest of split seconds. These bolts were boldly staying lit for seconds at
a time.

The flashes that were moving horizontally backlit the clouds with eerie yellows,
tans and greys, at times bright enough to turn night darkness into daytime
brilliance. It would be pitch black anywheres from two to ten seconds before
the next charge lit up, blinding everyone who was looking in its vicinity and
wrecking all of our night vision.

There's something mysterious, seductive and just the tiniest bit scary about
that contrast of brilliant flashes of visible energy against the impenetrable
dark depths of the ocean's surface...

Knights in Dark Blue Coveralls

Received Sept. 2

Last night was a busy night. We had a personnel issue that took CO and OPS well
into the wee hours of the morning to resolve. My heart and thoughts go out to all
our shipmates who are standing the watch while they have loved ones in crisis ashore.
It is not easy to be away from life-long families and friends while others you care
about are suffering. We do our best with our shipboard families and support networks,
but it is still a difficult and heart-wrenching situation.

OPS and CO worked hard to come up with a great solution that helped one shipmate last
night. Ha - I came up with the title for this post before I wrote it, and am just now
realizing how the title applies more than I thought it did. CO was in his dark blue
coveralls last night; I think OPS may have put his uniform on...or never taken it off
to go to bed -- I'm not sure. Either way, they did great things to assist our
shipmate in response to a crisis at home. They were definitely Knights in Dark Blue
Coveralls.

Anyway, I had a bit part in the efforts that got me up for about an hour at 2:00 am,
and then again for about 5 minutes at 4:30 am. When I was up at 2 am, I latched my
door open, because I knew I'd be up for a bit. When I got up at 4:30, I didn't think
about it, and shut my door behind me as I walked out of my state room.

We installed new handles and locks during the last inport to help simplify our key
management. I'm not sure I'm used to the new equipment yet, because somehow I didn't
realize that the little lock button had been pushed, and when I shut my door, I locked
myself out. My bed was *right **there!!** on the other side of a locked door.
I probably cussed. Out loud. Maybe even loudly out loud.
I ran through my options. I called the bridge to ask if they had keys when I damn well
knew the answer -- the OOD keys are kept in my stateroom underway so everyone knows
where they are. And where they were was behind a locked door.

I contemplated calling the Key Control Officer, who is our 1LT (pronounced "one el-tee,"
our Deck Department Head). But I knew he had just gotten off watch about an hour before
and wasn't getting enough sleep as it was without me calling him with a truly boneheaded
request.

I called Main Control where our engineers stand the engine room watch. I talked to MKC JN,
the Engineer of the Watch (EOW, pronounced "ee-oh-double yu"), to see if they could take
the hinges off my door to get me inside. Until I remembered that the door opens in because
the hinges are on the inside of the door.

However, he did give me the great idea of taking off the kick plate. Kick plates are
installed on doors where there is only one point of egress. A panel comes off at the
bottom of the door so you don't have to open the whole door to get out of a space. I
wasn't really sure how to get the kick plate off, so he offered to send up his Aux
watchstanders (Auxiliary watchstanders -- they make hourly rounds on equipment scattered
throughout the ship to make sure it all operates within appropriate parameters).

MK3 JB and FN JH came to my rescue and yanked off the kick plate from the bottom of my
door, allowing me access back to my room...and my bed so I could sleep for a few more hours.

Definitely also Knights in Dark Blue Coveralls!

42-Day Challenge

I've been after myself to write more. I enjoy it. I get a lot out of it. It's good for me. It helps me build my community. But for some reason, I have the **hardest** time actually doing it. I can always find something else to do, which usually involves sitting on my couch at home and watching tv or reading a not-so-intellectual novel while snacking on something that I really don't need to eat.

So I need a way to encourage myself to write. Starting last patrol, I drafted up a list of personal goals -- I even geeked out on it to the point that I printed out a spreadsheet with the dates at the top, and little boxes to check off for each goal that I completed each day or week or month. Some of the goals have stayed the same for this patrol: Eat healthy things first (this gives me permission to eat dessert, but I really must eat my salad first), drink two bottles of water per day, limit myself to 2 alcohol drinks per night on liberty port calls, and email my family at least once/week (they're very patient with me for sending out one mass email that copies everyone and the cousins, and even more patient when I don't actually get one sent).

New for this patrol are: Train for a 1/2 marathon that takes place a few weeks after we return to homeport (I'm sure there will be more on this later, but just as a teaser, it takes 34 laps around the flight deck to make a mile), do my neck stretches at least 3 times per day, and...write a blog post a day for 42 days straight, starting today.

42 seems like a random number, but the more I thought about it, the more I like it. I initially chose it because...well, I turned 42 last month and it has a nice poetic symmetry to it. It's also exactly six weeks of writing, which will be challenging, but is totally do-able and may help me develop some good habits that I want to cultivate.

We'll also be underway for the whole time, which gives me good material to write about, but makes me also think I need some rules for what I can legitimately call a post:

-- I must be extremely careful to not give away operational details, including schedules or techniques, tactics and procedures (TTP, pronounced tee-tee-pee), which in some ways is no fun at *all* because that's where some of the best stories come from. But OPSEC (operational security, pronounced op-sek) is important -- lose lips sink ships, and all that.

-- It's no fair for posts to just be a recitation of the day's meals, as tempting as that is because food is morale. Nor can I just provide a recall of what we did that day -- see rule 1.

-- Posts can be short, but there needs to be substance in each one. A story, a well-developed thought, or some insight. The best ones will be a combination of all three.

I'm going to ask a couple things of you:
-- Please encourage me. I don't think this will be easy. I have a lot of things to track and do as XO, and those are definitely my priority. But I think I'm good enough at my job that I can take 20 minutes or so a day to do something that I want to do for myself. I just won't always want to, and your encouragement will help me to do it anyway.

-- Please understand that underway internet connectivity is not entirely reliable. I will try my best to write every day, but posts may not go up on a daily basis because of when they get sent out to my trusted agent ashore.

Which brings me to my trusted agent ashore -- my Uncle Heathen. He has graciously offered to act as intermediary for me and post what I send him. Uncle H, thanks very much for helping me with this endeavor!

Thanks also go out, in advance, to my CO, CDR JMC. He is trusting me with an enormous amount of latitude by allowing me to post underway. I will do my best to uphold that trust, by following the rules I already shared with the crew (and on the blog) when I came to DILIGENCE.

Now, bring me that horizon!

JO Pro Dev, aka Junior Officer Professional Development

On a previous ship I was on, our CO had JO Pro Dev on Sunday afternoons at 1400 for an hour. It was mandatory. If you had watch, you had to find a standby. Attendance was taken, and participation was *ahem* strongly encouraged. There was no getting out of it.

One patrol, the CO assigned one chapter of the book It's Your Ship, by Michael Abrashoff to discuss each week among the group. I have nothing against the book -- it's a good leadership primer. But at the time (I admit, I haven't gone back to read it again), I felt that the concepts he promoted, while novel in the US Navy, were part of the Coast Guard's fundamental culture. The sessions, in my opinion, were a colossal waste of time, which I had precious enough of, as I tried to get qualified, complete my departmental work, define my own leadership style, and generally survive being underway. I swore to myself that if I ever found myself responsible for a unit's JO pro dev, I would make it Useful. Relevant. Practical.

Fast forward mumble mumble mumble number of years, and I find that I am responsible for DILIGENCE's JO pro dev, and both CAPT Randall and CDR Carter (our new CO who took command in early July) have been extremely supportive in letting me run with the program.

I am a traditionalist at heart, so I stuck with having the sessions on Sunday afternoons, after Divine Services. JOs are required to attend -- the Boatswain's Mates and Engineers have been generous with standing by for them on the bridge and in the engine room so they can be there. But I hope that's where the similarities end.

My goal for the sessions is to at least expose the JOs to the language of the Coast Guard bureaucracy about topics they're expected to know, but no one ever really takes the time to explain. I remember being XO on WASHINGTON as a second tour JO, and being uncomfortably clueless about all the finance mumbo-jumbo, officer corps verbiage, or enlisted personnel minutiae. It wasn't until my tour at Headquarters that I really started to understand the Coast Guard's financial system including AFCs and different "pots of money." Or opportunities of selection, zone sizes or in-zone, above-zone or below-zone. Or Servicewide Exam (SWE) raw scores, advancement rates, or non-rated personnel shortages. A lot of the details come with experience, but my theory is that early and often exposure to the language will go a long way to helping these young leaders adapt and thrive in an environment with so many convoluted and seemingly impenetrable policies.

Our most recent session was officer career management -- just in time for e-resumes to be submitted for Assignment Year 2016 (AY16). I broke the topic into three basic questions to be asked by each of the JOs for themselves: What do I want to do? How do I fit it all in? How do I get what I want?

For "what do I want to do?" we talked about the Officer Specialty Management System (OSMS) and Officer Specialty Codes, primary and secondary specialties, and the anomalies to the rule that you should have dual specialties. "How do I fit it all in?" included a discussion of expected time in each paygrade, about how many tours to which that equates, grad school and Senior Service School. And "How do I get what I want?" was all about OERs -- the importance thereof, primarily. The full discussion of OER input is our next topic, scheduled to be useful to the brand new ENSs that are writing OER input for the very first time for an OER due 30 September.

Other topics I have planned are:
-- The aforementioned OER input; the read ahead an OER input email I sent with detailed requirements for what the input should include (5-part folder complete with qual letters, training certificates, BZs; number of bullets, how the bullets should be structured, what they should/shouldn't include; which form to use).
-- Effective writing; the read ahead is Chapter 10 of the Correspondence Manual, a surprisingly well-written treatise on military writing.
-- Reading the "message board;" the read ahead is a CG-7 memo titled "Operational Messaging Requirements." (Do we still call it a message board even though the routing clipboard is decades gone?)
-- CG Intel "Infrastructure;" CDR Carter's secondary specialty is Intel, which is a great resource I will capitalize on as much as possible.
-- Mishaps and Risk Analysis; read aheads are a selection of mishap messages and final action memos. I'm a little leery that this will be beating a dead horse, but I think it's an important enough topic that I'm going to do it anyway.
-- Strategic document discussion: read ahead is one of the "Key Documents" on the right column of http://www.uscg.mil/seniorleadership/ -- we'll decide later if we want to pick one or have the JOs pick one. But this will start their brains thinking in Big Coast Guard terms, and clue them in of where we fit within the larger, national picture.

Previous topics include:
-- Coast Guard appropriations structure: it was **painfully** boring, but at least now the JOs have been exposed to the idea that there are more "pots of money" out there than just the funds from which the ship spends.
-- Enlisted workforce management: from boot camp to retirement, we discussed advancement requirements including the SWE, sea and award points, and preliminary and revised cuts, different "off-roads" to commissioning, and how the enlisted marks (evaluation) system fits in to the whole picture.
-- Effective counseling: I asked the Chief's Mess to lead this one, to help the JOs think about how to make performance counseling as useful as possible.
-- Headquarters structure: we talked about the numbering system, that has morphed back into a numbering and lettering system, the difference between DCO and DCMS, "above the line" staffs, and the importance of making sure that having the right people in the room for a policy discussion is important -- because if you forget a key player, you've essentially wasted everyone else's time in the room.
-- Leadership philosophy development: this isn't the CG Academy anymore, boys and girls. It's time to put into practice those leadership concepts that were drilled into them for four years (or four months at OCS). And there's a big difference between talking about leadership in a classroom setting, and seeing it put into effect with real people.

The second year JOs are getting a few repeats, like effective writing, OER writing and officer career management. But a) these topics are important enough to bear repeating and b) they have the benefit of nearly a year's worth of exposure to these concepts and can help ask the right questions to get the first year ENSs thinking about the topics more deeply.

I'll have to circle back to the JOs in about five to seven years to find out if these sessions actually lived up to my goals. I hope they find them useful now, even if they aren't always completely scintillating topics. I mean, what else do we have to do on a Sunday afternoon underway?

jk -- I totally know the answer to that!

General Emergency

I read an article on NPR a few weeks ago about the power of writing -- how writing down goals and working through problems in writing can have all kinds of positive benefits. I have been on the fence lately about whether I wanted to continue putting effort into this blog (as sparse as it has been lately), and this article reminded me about why I write.

I think one thing I need to do to help myself write more and write more effectively is to define for myself what this blog is: is it to showcase the amazing efforts of this great crew? Is it a forum for me to Think Big Coast Guard Thoughts? Is it a means to work through leadership quandaries?

At different times, it is all of the above. I have to be ok with that, and not confine myself to thinking it's just This One Thing. And posts don't have to be long, or earth-shakingly insightful. They just have to be.

So all that to say it's been a while since I posted. Time slips away from me somehow; deadlines creep up, weeks pass in a blur, and before I know it, the patrol is over and we're substantially into our inport. I wrote the post below while we were on patrol, somewhere in the deep blue Caribbean. Just another day at the office...

************************

There I was, sitting peacefully at my desk, waiting for the Boatswain's Mate of the Watch (BMOW, pronounced bee-mo) to come down and pick up the Plan of the Day (POD, pronounced pee-oh-dee...don't ask me why it's not "pod" -- just the way it is) so he could post it around the ship. I was reading the newly released 2015 Commandant's Strategic Intent (I swear I'm not making that up) and had just finished the Executive Summary.

DINGDING*DINGDINGARINGDINGDINGARINGARINGRINGRINGRING

Now set General Emergency. There has been a report of flooding in forward aux. All hands man your General Emergency billets for flooding. Traffic pattern is up and forward on starboard, down and aft on port. Now set General Emergency.

DINGDINGDINGDINGARINGDINGDINGARINGARINGRINGRINGRING

Now set General Emergency. There has been a report of flooding in forward aux. All hands man your General Emergency billets for flooding. Traffic pattern is up and forward on starboard, down and aft on port. Now set General Emergency.

*It was about this point that the thought flashed quickly through my mind, wait, I didn't plan a drill right now. Oh shit, this isn't a drill!

I went to rush up to the bridge, grabbing my red hat along the way, but quickly realized if I went up to the bridge with a red hat on, people might think I'm there as part of a training team, and this was a drill. But this wasn't a drill, so I paused for a moment to get my regular hat, and then went up to the bridge. I did, however, forget to change from my boat shoes to my steel toed boots which are required during emergency responses. Everybody has to be ready to combat a casualty during GE (General Emergency). I failed to be Semper P that night.

I encountered a stream of people on their way down from the bridge to their assigned billets, hollering "Down ladder" as they hurried by. I called "Up ladder" as I made my way up the ladder to the bridge.

SUPPO (Support Officer) had the watch and asked me to take over for the Quartermaster of the Watch (QMOW, pronounced kue-mo) so the QMOW could make it to his position as aft boundaryman faster. The QMOW, BM3 R**, was in the middle of repeating his first pipe, and as soon as he was finished I offered my relief. SUPPO reminded me to pull out the DC plates (DC = damage control, aka ship's drawings) so YN1 could plot the damage and we could keep track of what was going on on the bridge.

** I refuse to let evil win, or even gain any ground from me. However, crewmembers have expressed concern about the security risks of having their full names used online. I'll use titles and initials instead, so we know who I'm talking about, but the bad guys have to work harder to figure it out.

By this time, our Damage Control Assistant (DCA, pronounced dee-see-a) had taken over damage control efforts and piped forward and aft boundaries for forward aux, the space that was flooding; more formally known as the forward auxiliary space because it is forward of the engine room and contains auxiliary equipment like fuel transfer manifolds). Boundaries are meant to prevent damage from spreading throughout the ship, and for flooding consist of the watertight bulkheads and fittings that we use to move around the ship. The boundarymen are responsible for making sure the boundaries are set (i.e., doors, hatches, and scuttles are closed for flooding; doors, hatches, and scuttles closed, flammable material pulled at least 18" away from bulkheads, and fire curtains in place for fire/smoke) and holding (no bulkheads bulging or overheads sagging from collected water, or paint bubbling from fire -- and if there is, to provide cooling water from their faked out and energized fire hose).

BM3 S had relieved me as QMOW by now, and was working through the bridge checklist to make sure we hadn't missed any critical steps. SUPPO had split the Deck and the Conn with our new 1LT (First Lieutenant and Deck Department Head), so SUPPO was still driving the ship and safely navigating it as the Conn, while 1LT had the Deck and was tracking all the other details of combating the damage. SN RM (lookout for GE) and SN WB (helmsmen for GE) were all on the bridge too, relieving their watchstations so SA SR could leave the open bridge as lookout and SA AB could leave the helm. CO and OPS were also on the bridge by that point and were handing out flash gear to everyone. Flash gear consists of a cotton, long sleeved red shirt, a flame retardant hood and cotton gloves, and a Kevlar helmet and is meant to protect skin from burns and noggins from flying debris.

While all this was happening on the bridge, people below decks were also manning the Repair Locker to maximize our readiness to combat the casualty. Repair lockers are lead by Repair Locker Leaders who coordinate Repair Locker response, and direct the response of the On Scene Leader. The On Scene Leader provides reports back to the repair locker from the Attack Team Leader about what actions the Attack Team is taking. An attack team enters the space where the casualty is to patch pipes or plug holes, fight fires, repair toxic gas leaks or desmoke a space. If they enter a space with compromised air quality, they don and energize SCBAs for clean air.

Investigators continually make rounds looking for additional damage that might not be readily apparent. P-100 teams rig the gas-driven pumps that serve as a back-up for our installed fire main system in case the fire main is either the cause of the casualty and/or damaged by the casualty (i.e., it has a hole in the piping and is flooding the space with sea water). And the Rapid Response Team rushes immediately to the cause of the casualty to see if they can combat it quickly before it gets too big and out of control.

That was the case tonight. The Rapid Response Team secured the source of flooding in forward aux. A potable water filter housing had come lose and was spraying fresh water. We initially had 2" of water on the deck, but the installed system quickly reduced that to 1". EO, acting in his capacity as Damage Control Officer, asked the Conn to make some "S" turns to move the water from side to side to suck more of it out with the installed pump. Watchstanders sucked the rest of it out with shop vacs.

Our OODs and Engineers of the Watch (EOWs) are trained to call away for help and set GE even when casualties might be manageable for the watch. It's a lot easier to stand down and send people back to bed than scramble to get Attack Teams ready when flooding or a fire has gotten out of control because someone took too long to act.

The first few times I read my first CO's standing orders, I didn't quite understand the emphasis she placed on proactiveness. It took me a while to get that if I didn't do *something,* no one else might either and that could cost us the ship and lots of lives.Or at the very least, a lot of damaged equipment and plenty of lost sleep. I don't think proactiveness is the natural state of very many people, but generally, the CG does a great job of making it a naturalized state for cuttermen.

We stood down from GE after about seven minutes from the first pipe for General Emergency. And *that's* why we train incessantly.

Keeping Busy

It's been a slow operational start to the patrol. The weather isn't really great, and I think that has hampered action that would otherwise be keeping us busy.

So what do you do when you have 75 people out to sea for a couple of weeks at a time with not much going on? We spent a lot of time last patrol working on proficiency in preparation for transfer season. This patrol, we're continuing the focus on proficiency, especially since we're starting to get some turnover of people. Four of our non-rated personnel stayed ashore when we left homeport a few weeks ago. Their average time onboard was just over 22 months. SN Mike Patti is headed off to IS A school, after a 3-year wait. The look on his face when he got his orders was *priceless!* He couldn't stop grinning all day long. SN Vincent Deegan and SN Phil Cook were in the same boot camp company, came to the DILI on the same day, and left to go to the same ME A school class. And FN Jeremy Hunt is going to brave AST A school. My best wishes for all of them on the next step of their careers!

But we'll miss them. Among them, they had a ton of experience. We got a few new guys in before we left, and are getting more to fill the empty billets throughout the patrol. It's definitely the start of a busy transfer season, and we need to make the most of the time we have underway to qualify people as quickly as possible so we don't see any operational impacts of losing so many qualified and well-trained people in the span of three months.

In order to help with this, my goal is to have one Integrated Training Team (ITT) drill and one unannounced drill per week. The ITT works to design and implement drills that span across training specialties to impose realistic and cascading casualties. What happens if you lose an engine due to a unusual metallic noise (Engineering Casualty Training Team (ETT)) while trying to recover a man overboard (Navigation and Seamanship Training Team (NSTT)) who has a compound fracture of the leg because of a shark bite (Medical Training Team (MTT))? Do people know how to respond to bad things that happen because of other bad things?

In order to keep from getting bored, the training teams have to be creative about what kind of casualties they impose. We can't do a Main Space Fire drill Every. Single. Time. and expect people to maintain enthusiasm and energy when attacking the casualty.

**************************************************************

So I got a little distracted by the patrol and paused this post for a while. SN Deegan is headed back to the ship after getting selected for an Officer Candidate School (OCS) class later this summer. So excited for him!

But the pace of the patrol hasn't picked up much. We're still doing lots of training. We conducted a gun shoot last week, where we shot rounds from our .50 caliber machine guns and 25 mm machine gun. At the same time, we simulated taking rounds and damage to different parts of the ship. YN1 Linton Holmes suffered a (simulated) sucking chest wound on the bridge, and was able-y relieved as phone talker and damage control plotter by BM1 Al Albert and the two First Class cadets we have onboard. 1/C Maggie Hine and 1/C Victoria Sutherland took turns talking to DC Central about how they were combating the shipboard casualties. There was a lot of "request you say again"s as they got used to listening to the sound-powered phone over the noise of the .50 cals going off less than 10 feet behind them. When they weren't talking on the phone, they were conning the ship to keep the target in range. But our ship was saved, despite taking two "hits" from an aggressive target. The aggressive target -- well, let's just say our orange pumpkin target has a few more holes taken out of it than it did before.

We also have four Third Class cadets onboard. 3/Cs Choi, Chambers, Campbell and Furry have already qualified as Helm and Lookouts, and are progressing well on their basic damage control qualification. We'll be sending them back to the Academy with some great sea stories!

And we found a great fishing spot. Not gonna tell you all where it is. But over the course of two days, we caught about half a dozen tuna and rainbow runners, and three wahoos. The biggest wahoo was 36 pounds. I'm looking forward to a sashimi platter here soon.

And lastly, I've been meaning to post this link for a while, but here's a video put together by (then) SN Andrew Davern, BM3 Jake Rorabeck, and BM3 Anthony Sanabria, with help from the entire crew. This is footage from my first patrol onboard last September/October...right before our 50th Anniversary celebration. Enjoy!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-dPh4bDazU