Rest and Recuperation

The trip back to Japan was uneventful, we pulled back into port in the morning and most of the crew was able to take the afternoon off. We were scheduled to remain in port for the next few weeks and that would give us some time to rest. I started working on a couple of qualifications I would soon need for my warfare pin including Small Boat Officer.

I was not the only one working on qualifications so a day was scheduled for rhib training. The rhib is a small rigid hull inflatable boat used for both common and special operations. There are two on the deck of every destroyer. It is lowered into the water using a slewing arm davit with the use of lines and pulleys. After the rhib had been placed in the water, I was instructed to climb down a rope ladder from the flight deck to join the boat. One salute to the bridge upon passing and we were off. The rhib is designed to be fast and highly maneuverable. It can turn on a dime but is very difficult to flip. After about an hour of various training situations like deploying a rescue swimmer and docking, we came back to the ship and I climbed back up the ladder. I would need several more rides in the rhib for my qualification to be finished but this gave me a great start.

I started a preliminary count of what the store would need for the next deployment. We were not scheduled to spend that much time at sea. The main goal for the upcoming deployment would be to refurbish the ship for an upcoming inspection called INSURV. I will comment more on this in later posts. I needed to strike a balance between the days we would be at sea and in a foreign port. I also wanted to continue to introduce new items for the crew.

The rest of the time in port was spent documenting areas of the ship in need of repair. Most of these efforts centered on lagging. Lagging is insulation that surrounds piping and bulkheads, it absorbs high temperatures and keeps the systems or bulkheads protected. Over time much of the lagging had deteriorated, fixing it is fairly difficult, my ship has neither the training nor the materials on hand to work those types of jobs. Thus we would be going back to Singapore to have most of the work done there.