It's A Small World After All

In the scope of the Armed Services, the Coast Guard is the smallest at about
48,000 members, including active duty, reserves and civilian employees --
should be somewhere close if I remember my Body Shop numbers correctly. And
the afloat community is a subset within the Coast Guard -- at some point I
must have heard the number of personnel afloat at any one time, but I can't
remember it right now. Maybe 4,000 to 6,000 people stationed on ships? And
of course there are folks that are cuttermen who happen to currently serve
ashore, or people that you've run into at previous jobs that have also since
moved on.

Our patrol area right now is rich with shipmates I know from previous
encounters. My last supervisor is commanding a WMEC homeported here, and I
worked with his XO while we were both at HQ; another WMEC is commanded by a
friend I met while at HQ; I know the Sector Logistics Department Head from
HQ; one of my 12ATAs is commanding a patrol boat homeported here; the
Seventh crew XO from my time in Bahrain is on another patrol boat here; my
OS1 from Bahrain advanced a while back and is now an OSC on an WMEC here;
walking across the base a couple of patrols ago, I ran into one of my ENSs
from when I was OPS who has his own patrol boat now. I'm sure there are
others, but those are the folks I can think of off the top of my very tired
head right now.

Shoots, I think I might know more people here than I do in Wilmington!

There's a great sense of community that comes from sailing into a port call,
getting tied up and then walking across the pier to talk sea stories with
friends, peers and shipmates I may not have seen in five years. It's an
understanding, a shared experience of being underway on a Coast Guard cutter
-- not having to explain all the acronyms and evolutions, having experienced
the exasperation of JOs that are still learning or logistics that don't
always work as expected, the giddiness of having things go, maybe not
perfectly, but right enough to get the job done and dodging Murphy's bullet
one more time. And always the sea stories. This one time, off the coast of
Panama...

Today at dinner, we were talking about the other ships we're working with in
the area. I hadn't been paying attention to exactly who was out here and was
delightfully surprised to be reminded that one of my friends is CO of one of
the boats. CO and OPS asked me where I knew him from, and then came the
inevitable stories about when we sailed together (XO, who's whistling on the
bridge?!?!!). And when I got back to my stateroom from dinner, I had an
email from my friend, inviting me over to his boat for lunch since we'll be
working in the same area for a while. It'll be great to visit, and also see
how he has matured as a leader and shipmate since we last sailed together. I
hope he can say the same 

I don't really feel like I've done this topic justice. I'm sitting here with
a grin on my face typing this post, can't quite figure out why -- there's
just something special about seeing old shipmates out and about in the
fleet. 

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Python

I feel a little like the python who swallowed a pig tonight. My eyes are a
little bugged out. My gut aches from what it's been fed. My sides are
swollen and my brain is slow.

I am digesting. It will take me a while to get it all down, but I'm working
on it. 

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Sunrise Yoga

My alarm went off this morning, like most mornings at 0615. Usually I laze
around for a few more minutes, before I finally drag my lazy carcass out of
the rack by 0630 or 0645. This morning, I sprang up, and hustled through my
morning ablutions. I had Sunrise Yoga on the fantail at 0630 to be ready
for!

I called the bridge to ask what the temperature was outside, and was
pleasantly relieved to find it had warmed from the blustery low 50s we had
last night for flight ops to 70 degrees this morning. Sunrise was predicted
for 0725ish, so I knew it would be pitch-ass black when I got out there. But
go I must -- Sunrise Yoga was on the POD (Plan of the Day), handwritten in
last night at 2130 because I forgot to type it in the original draft.

We'd been wallering around all night, with the swell gently off the quarter,
so I was a little nervous about actually be able to even stand upright,
never mind move through a series of sun salutations or breathe deeply in
down dog. I set out the mats on the centerline of the ship, and hoped for
the best. ME3 RS, SK2 KH and CO all braved the dark, rolling decks to join
me. 

Now, I have never taught a yoga class before. I don't even really have my
own practice at home. I go to yoga when it doesn't interfere with my
schedule, which usually translates into weekend warrior yoga two or so
weekends a month. I ran through one practice session on my own before we got
underway, with a very basic series of poses, and figured that would be good
enough. And then...well, then I told other people I'd be guiding Sunrise
Yoga on the flight deck (fantail made more sense this morning) on Wednesday
and Saturday mornings at 0630 this patrol. So now I had to do it.

Guiding a yoga session ain't all that easy! I had to be loud to be heard
three people away because the fantail was kinda noisy, being right over the
steering gear in aft steering. I kept getting my left and right mixed up. We
were still rolling, the decks were slippy wet, and I wasn't really sure how
much experience any of my fellow yogis had.

But I still had a blast! We started seated to focus on our breathing and
then moved through some seated side bends. On to table top and cat/cow pose.
Then some core work -- extending opposite arm and leg and then pulling elbow
to knee and then extending again. That takes some balance when you're in a
yoga studio planted solidly on terra firma. Underway, with a quartering
swell...it was definitely a level 3 core work! Then we moved on to starfish
pose, on one bent knee with the other leg extended out to the side, bending
over the extended leg. Then to a series of five sun salutations, moving
through Warrior I, Warrior II, extended side angle and reverse Warrior and
then through a vinyasa of a chataranga push-up, up dog and down dog. I may
have giggled my way through a couple of the reverse Warriors as a swell
tipped the boat away from me and I almost landed on my not so Warrior butt. 

And about this time, the sun was sending pink and orange rays of brilliance
shooting from behind the clouds. 

We moved through pigeon pose on both sides, and cow face pose -- both hip
openers because I was being a little selfish. Then a seated forward fold,
bridge pose and shavashana. We ended in easy seated pose as the rays of the
rising sun disappeared behind thickened cloud cover. 

I know shavasana is supposed to be meditative, but I couldn't help the
thought that passed through my mind of being intensely grateful for the
thick steel upon which my body was resting, that protects me from this great
ocean and allows me to sail on her waters and have this amazing job. Even
though I didn't breathe the way I was supposed to because I was giving
guidance to the other yogis, and I didn't stretch as deeply as I normally
would because I was trying to simply maintain my balance on the rolling
deck, I left this morning's Sunrise Yoga session so happy and energized. 

Namaste DILIGENCE!

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Big Thoughts

This will likely be a multi-part post, because I'm still working on framing
the issue in my head. But I've been thinking for a while about how being
good at or doing well on inspections really translates into being successful
at the mission or effective at our jobs. 

DILIGENCE entered her "inspection cycle" earlier this fiscal year and has
gone through about half of our required inspections so far. We still have
our big ones, Command Assessment of Readiness for Training (CART) and
Tailored Ships Training Availability (TSTA, pronounced tis-ta) coming up in
the next number of months. We've had Finance & Admin, Ordnance Technical
Inspection (OTI, pronounced oh-tee-eye) and Ordnance Safety Inspection (OSI,
pronounced oh-ess-eye -- no idea why these are not oh-tee and oh-see), Food
Service Assistance and Training Team (FSAT, pronounced ef-sat), and Aviation
Standardization (AVSTAN). 

We've spent countless hours reviewing checklists at many different levels,
double checking them, building binders of documentation, running reports,
and on and on and on. And, truly, I do understand the need for all the
bureaucracy when it comes to safety, money, bullets, people, training,
accountability, etc, etc. There's a reason why we have all the regulations
and requirements, and the checklists we use for the inspections are hugely
helpful at making sure we're doing what we're supposed to be doing as told
in numerous different places, spread through a couple hundred different
manuals. 

I'm not questioning the inspection requirement or process. 

What I am wondering is, in an organization like the Coast Guard whose
guiding principles are Service to Nation, Duty to People and Commitment to
Excellence, how does a commitment to excellence in inspections translate
into service to nation? Is there a direct link between operational
excellence -- being good at what we do out on the water chasing
narco-terrorist or rescuing people from overloaded and unsafe boats or
searching out a mariner in distress -- really what the American people pay
their taxes for us to do, and the sometimes mind-numbing tedium of being
good administratively? Or are administrative organization and operational
readiness two sides of the same coin?

I feel a diagram coming on: 






 

Hopefully, that worked. If for some reason the diagram didn't translate
through all the computers, it's basically a two-dimensional graph, with
"Mission Effectiveness" on the horizontal axis and "Administrative
Effectiveness" on the vertical axis. There's a scale for both axes, from
"Poor" to "Good." I think what I want my question to do is to fill in what
scenarios look like for each of the quadrants.

And is "Mission Effectiveness" a misnomer? How much of what we consider
"Mission Effectiveness," i.e., drugs seized, suspected narco-traffickers
arrested, lives saved, migrants interdicted, is just plain the luck of being
in the right place at the right time (the power of an effective intelligence
process not-with-standing)? And not being unlucky with mishaps because
sometimes shit just goes squirrely (an unexpected visit from Mr Murphy that
the best team coordination cannot avert)? 

I gotta stop now -- I think I'm getting to what's been bugging me, but I
still have a couple of layers to peel through.

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
** UNDERWAY**

Outbound Cape Fear

It's a 26 nautical mile transit that takes between two and a half and three
hours depending on which way and how strong the current is running. We've
made it up the river in about two and a quarter hours, with a following
current of about two knots -- but I don't recommend that because, when we
did that, the flood was still running about a knot by the time we got to our
pier which made mooring...exciting. Especially since we were twisting in the
river to moor port side to. We almost moored to the pier north of us, which
could have been bad because it doesn't have the depth of water alongside
that we need...

Today, though, OPS timed it perfectly, and we got underway just as the ebb
current was coming slack. We were starboard side to, and had to twist around
once we got away from the pier to head in the right direction. DCA did a
great job of using the wind and what hint of an ebb was left to spring on
line three (our forward leading spring line) while backing on the outboard
engine to get the bow away from the pier, take in line three, and then drive
into the center of the river to start our twist to the south.

The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge rose quickly so we didn't have to station keep
and wait for it to go up. Thank you so much for your patience to anyone who
was stuck in bridge traffic for us! Just south of the bridge, we had to
squeak by a dredging barge who was taking up about 2/3 of the channel with
their work. 

The rest of our transit was smooth, after we got our small boat and line
handlers back onboard. The ranges were (mostly) all clearly lit (we'll be
sending an ATON (aids to navigation) discrepancy report for the one or two
range lights that we noticed were not watching properly). A gentle flood did
turn a bit strong once we got to the southern portion of the river, just
between Sunny Point on the west and Sugarloaf on the east. With the wind
coming from behind us, and the current coming up, the water stood up into
cheerful little white capped peaks and frothed energetically. 

We overtook a sailing vessel also headed outbound; they graciously moved
over to the west side of the channel for us and hugged the green buoys. We
danced a little with SOUTHPORT and CROATOAN, the Fort Fisher/Southport
ferries that make hourly runs between the two sides of the river. And
RANGER, the ferry between Bald Head Island and Southport, subsequently
overtook us just north of Battery Island.

Our turn around Battery Island, through the Big S turn (or as CO heard 1LT
say one transit, the Big Ass Turn...I'm not sure which I like better. Both
are highly accurate), always looks like we're going to run up on the marsh.
But we made it safely through and had a nice conversation with a shrimper
outbound from Southport about him staying on the green side of the channel. 

And then we were out to sea. We're hugging close to the coast, to try to
stay out of the worst of the seas until they lay down some more. I expect
we'll rock gently in the trough all night long. 

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Have You Heard Where You're Going Yet?

No. No, I have not. Not yet. The email or IM may come any day. But, NO, I Do Not Know Where I'm Going Yet.

I have to keep telling myself over and over again that it's ok. It's still very early. No matter where I go, whatever job I go to, it's what I make of it. My attitude can take a great job and make it crappy, or take a crappy job and make it great -- I've done it before. And, it's not like they'll run out of jobs before they get to me, and leave me with nothing. I'll still **have** a job. I just don't know what or where it is yet.

And that's ok. Really ok (if I say it enough times, maybe it will sink into my thick skull and I'll start to believe it). This would be the second earliest I've ever found out. First was finding out three days before Christmas 2007 that I'd be going to MAUI in Bahrain, and that was only because PDT (pre-deployment training) started like five weeks later. Even if the Assignment Officer doesn't reach out until the day before the CDR Assignment Panel, that's still relatively early for me to know.

And what does it matter anyway, right now? I've got a patrol to make it through, a mission at hand, a crew to guide, a ship to sail, and another busy inport to plan. Knowing right this minute would not change **any** of that. I'm not bored with my current job; I don't really want to leave it; I still have plenty to learn and accomplish. I do not need to know right now.

But the truth of the matter is, the ironically obnoxious high point of my day was having two people, neither of whom I've ever had a conversation about transfer season with, ask me if I knew where I was going yet. Sadly, I don't think I was as graceful with either of them as I should have been.

Truth is, I'm grumpy with wondering what's next. Never mind which specific job I'm going to, even knowing which coast would make a difference (maybe). Knowing which state, or (gasp) city, would be great. Knowing the actual job -- HUGE relief.

I don't know why I'm so wrapped up in this, spending so much time wondering. Maybe it's because I'm a planner by nature, training and profession, and not knowing means I can't plan. (Somehow this line of thought is sounding dreadfully familiar to one I think I wrote about two years ago when I was waiting for orders out of HQ -- there may be a trend here...) Maybe it's the sense of pending Big Change that I don't feel like I have any control over right now. Once I know, I have control of how I react and what I do about it; I control my destiny then. Right now...not so much.

And at least it's only myself I have to plan for. I can't imagine the pressure if I had a spouse and or kids that were also hanging in the balance. There are times when being single definitely has its advantages.

All in good time. I know the AOs are busy, and they have a slew of people to contact. They'll get to me when they get to me. It's still early. There are no bad jobs, just bad attitudes.

Maybe later this week...???...please, Universe, please...soon...

Intentions for 2016

It's almost 2016. Another year down and gone. 2015 was pretty darn good; a few disappointments, and far too much time away from people I love and enjoy hanging out with, but overall, very good.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions. I do New Year's Intentions. I thought a little about the difference between resolving to do something and intending to do something. Intending definitely sounds a little weaker, a little wussier. Resolving is steadfast, committed, resolute. Intending gives me wiggle room to forgive myself more easily if I don't live up to my own high expectations. So, New Year's Intentions:

Blog five days a week while away from homeport: my week runs from Monday to Sunday, and while I give myself two days off a week, they cannot (?)...should not be back to back days. I'll lose my momentum if I do that. And the beauty of getting underway for patrol close to the beginning of the New Year is that I get to immediately put this Intention to the test. Thanks again to Uncle Heathen for being my aider and abettor; and thanks for the ideas of how to make this Intention easier to face on those days when I just don't wanna write (whiny footstomp implied). This post kicks off my first week. Yay, Monday!

Stop buying stuff with hidden sugar in it. I just got done reading Year of No Sugar: A Memoir, by Eve Schaub. And I'd love to try the same experiment she and her family did. Alas, I have two options for going on patrol with an Intention like that: take nearly all of my food with me which is not particularly feasible because of storage space, the impending timeline for departure, and my lack of available time (aka, my general laziness) to plan; or piss every single member of the crew off by imposing my quite ridiculous Intention on them (CO vetoed this outright). So I must compromise, and the compromise I can live with (for now) is to stop buying stuff with hidden sugar in it. This means reading labels, learning about fructose, sucrose, and a whole bunch of other -oses. And while I'm on patrol, I have a built-in loophole: I don't actually buy any food to prepare so I don't have any direct control of what gets purchased. I buy meals ready made by our fantastic cooks, which I will eat with relish and delight that I don't have to fret over food when there's so much other stuff on which I do need to focus. I do promise to do my best not to be obnoxious reading the labels of all the condiments we have out on the table and protesting (loudly) when Every. Damn. One. Of. Them. has some form of sugar in it. I may at least have a conversation with FSC about how much he and his guys read labels when buying staples like tomato sauce and mayonnaise.

But this also means intentional desserts -- not just shoving cake or cookies into my pie-hole because they're easy and available. Sorry, EO, I know you like me better when I'm not on a no-sugar kick, but I am allowing myself one dessert per week. And this time, honey is not allowed -- store it in the fridge all you like. No more being all self-righteous about not having an after dinner candy bar, but eating three rolls smothered in honey.

I'm not doing this specifically to lose weight (though dropping about 15 pounds sure would be a nice by-product); I'm doing it to try to manage my energy levels a little better. I don't want to be exhausted at the end of every day.

I suspect there's more going on with my propensity towards laziness on my time off than just my diet, especially after reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. On every single personality test I've ever taken, back even when I was about 10 years old, I have always been an Introvert (yes, with a capital I). Large, noisy groups of people stress me out. It takes effort for me to make small talk and be personable, especially with people I have just met -- I can do it, and maybe, sometimes, even make it look relatively easy, but after encounters like that, I usually need a few quiet hours on my couch with a good book. Reading Quiet was helpful because it pointed out many of the benefits of being an introvert that I hadn't previously considered.

Or maybe I just read too much.

So what does being an Introvert have to do with New Year's Intentions? I'm transferring this summer, moving to a new city. Unfortunately, because I love Wilmington and DILIGENCE -- but I know I have to leave. And I want the energy and the framework for involving myself in things outside of work so that I can build a sense of community wherever it is that I'm moving to for the next two to three years. I intend to find a place or two to volunteer at least once a month, maybe Girls on the Run or some local arboretum/nature preserve. I intend to join a running group -- and actually run with them at least once a week. I intend to accept invitations to coffee, lunch or dinner with friends and not look for excuses to bail, no matter how draining work has been. And I intend to be okay with letting myself be a lazy slug on my quiet couch if I have met my (self-imposed) social obligations for the week, guilt free.

Happy 2016 all! May it bring you peace, happiness and the adventure you seek!