2015 03 29 Sunday

I stood on the fantail and stared out at the buildings across the bay from the cutter. We were moored in Puerto Vallarta Mexico; one of the more popular Spring Break destinations in that part of the world. Having spent the previous day driving back and forth between the resort and the boat I could see why; it’s fairly well developed. There were plenty of first world amenities, several malls, a Wal-Mart and Sam’s club, high rise hotels, booze cruises, and miles of white beaches and Caribbean clear water.

The resort was… well a resort. The staff was smiling and friendly, 95% of which spoke excellent English. The guests looked as though they had been sampled from every middle-class family on the planet. Americans, Chinese, German, South African, Israeli, Russian; I heard it all. I dozed off as I watched a Pacific sunset before heading back to the cutter to get a full night’s rest (and to sleep off the margaritas) before reporting for watch.

In foreign ports someone had to man the OPCEN, or Operations Center, just in case a critical message came through one of the secure networks. Up to that point, it hadn’t happened. No one in their right mind expected a cutter with more than half its crew on liberty, and very likely inebriated, to be able to respond immediately.

Technically we were supposed to be able to do exactly that, and in a pinch probably could, but there would be operational hell to pay afterwards. I very much doubt anyone would’ve had the patience to try and conduct a boarding while hung over. I think at that point we would have simply sunk their boat without bothering to collect contraband or arrest anyone, just to keep from having to do the paperwork.

”Drugs? Bales? Nah, just a bunch of guys with holes in their boat.” That isn’t so say it hasn’t happened in the past, but I can guarantee it wasn’t pleasant for anyone involved… if it did actually happen that is.

Anyway, when we pulled into a foreign port it was the Operations Specialists and Electronics Technicians who manned OPCEN. At the moment, I was between watches and therefore “on break”.

Puerto Vallarta, just PV for short, was a quiet port. Most of the mooring spaces were free and clear. The only other ship in sight was what looked like a “replica” of Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. The waterfront, such as it was, was little more than a busy highway with a mall on its eastern side and the sheer concrete cliff of the dock on the other. One hundred years ago it probably looked little different. Staring at the night life walking by on that sleepy Sunday night I could just imagine steam powered clipper ships down from San Francisco moored up next to loud sailor’s taverns set between the jungle and beach.

The cruise ships replaced the coal fired cargo ships, and the high rises and night clubs stood where the taverns once did. Even so, the place had the feel of an old port. Hundreds of thousands of souls passed through that place as they made their way up and down the coast. The international airport had only increased that traffic. We were supposedly on the cusp of spring break season. I for one, was glad we were missing the influx of 18 to 20 something’s.

I puffed contently on a short narrow Cuban cigar and was grateful that it wasn’t much longer than my index finger. That thing was so tightly rolled I had a hell of time lighting it. I thought it was unusually heavy when it was handed to me and I soon found out why. I’d handled rope that was less dense. My shipmate, who shared my appreciation for good sipping whiskey and earthy Caribbean cigars, sat next to me as we watched the water.

Like most enlisted men we discussed two things: our officers, and women. In some cases at the same time considering we had four female officers assigned to the cutter. Though where women were concerned, the topic usually centered on our wives, much safer than speculation on other women. The air was cool and the breeze barely perceptible. The smell of finely aged tobacco thankfully overwhelmed the ever-present scent of diesel exhaust and bilges.

He was expecting a little girl sometime soon. My mind drifted and I only devoted half my attention to the conversation. I wondered what it would be like to have a child at home, waiting on his or her dad to come striding through the front door, bags in both hands fending off dogs and reeking of three months on a 50-year-old ship.

He asked me the inevitable question everyone did when they saw my wedding band, “So, when are you going to have one?” I broke away from my pondering and said something noncommittal about getting out of debt first and going from there. Inside my heart broke a little at the thought of leaving a newborn and my wife alone for three months at a time. Military families did it all the time, and for longer than three months. Didn’t mean I wanted to make it a habit, but you lay in the bed you made and right then that bed was aboard a Coast Guard Cutter. I shift the topic back to the far less painful subject of officers.

I could feel nausea and a headache coming on. I had far too much coffee, too little water, and smoked the very rich cigar too fast. Some younger shipmates showed up from liberty with enormous stogies in hand looking for advice and wanting to join in. Thankfully mine was down to the end and it was time to pitch it over the side. I did so and pounded a bottle of water. And then did my best not to grin as I watched the two 19-year- old’s get their 8-inch-long smokes lit and slowly turn green. It was immediately obvious they wished they were doing anything else. Bigger was not always better.

If we had a reliable humidor aboard I’d secure a bundle for my father, in-laws, and uncle. However, we did not and I decided to spare them the unpleasant task of smoking dry cigars.

I needed to catch a nap before watch. I’d be up there from 2350 to 0550 and I was not looking forward to it. Too much time to sit alone in a dark room and think; especially when all I could think about was getting home to my wife and family. I excused myself and hit the rack. I was going to try and get in a dive trip the next day before we left. With any luck I’d an adventure to share with you.

End of Brief

This debrief takes place on Sunday March twenty second twenty fifteen.

2015 03 22 Sunday

According to the all too bright screen on my phone it was 0510, March 22, 2015. The cheerful guitar chords were quietly plunking away a bright and happy tune. I vengefully mashed my thumb down on the screen’s pulsing red X and swiped to the side to silence the noise. I could feel the crack in the glass slide across the surface of my thumb, any wider and that hair line fracture would split the pad of my finger. I let my face flop back down on my pillow making the split-second decision to engage my brain instead of letting it go back to sleep.

Surprisingly enough I’d learned to come full awake and ready to go within a second or two of being roused. I thought that was a trait only combat hardened soldiers learned. As it turns out anyone who has a career that involves long hours, living on the job site, and a level of stress that only varies but never goes away, learns to sleep in nearly any position at any opportunity. Said person also learns to come fully awake instantly.

Operationally cognizant I started processing why I set my alarm so damn early on a Sunday morning. It was “holiday routine” which meant that unless you had watch you were free to do and dress as you pleased. I rolled back through my short-term memory as I started cataloging my aches and pains.

While rowing was a full body exercise it targets specific muscle groups better than others. I could feel the memory of cramps in those groups. Which explained why I was tangled in my sleeping bag. Apparently, I spent the night folded into a pretzel. Which was no less than I deserved for rowing 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) for two and half hours the night before and not stretching properly afterwards.

Rowing, that’s why I set my alarm. I’d intended to get up early and put the rowing machine on the flight deck to row and watch the sunrise. Gingerly extending my legs I pressed my feet flat against the cold perforated sheet metal at one end the rack. Then raised my forearms over my head and gripped each elbow in the opposite hand. Given that my rock was only slightly longer than I was, the feet press elbow grab was how I stretched after waking. Flexing I could feel various joints and ligaments pop, shift and strain. My spine went off like a muted string of fireworks and I groaned into the pillow.

The relief from the tension overwhelmed me and I very nearly fell asleep again. The military part of my brain though held onto consciousness like a drowning man to anything that floats and I slid out of my rack to get dressed.

It was an arduous process to get the rowing machine through three different watertight doors and up a ladder well. Another alarm went off, 0515. I did some quick math. It’d be 0530 by the time I got out there and started my routine. I had watch at 0730. My routine took about 90 minutes. That left 30 minutes to shower, change into my uniform, and eat breakfast before watch. I decided to put on my uniform instead of PT gear. I’d just take the rower out and watch the sun come up. Several people mentioned wanting to row out there that day and the XO said we could leave it out till dark; I could PT after lunch. I probably needed more than seven hours between sessions anyway.

Sure enough it took me 15 minutes to move the two main pieces of the rower through the doors, up a ladder well, past the starboard small boat davit, and to the aft edge of the flight deck.

I plopped down on the seat of the machine and faced aft, almost due east. The sky was a hazy grey, almost the color of day old camp fire ashes. There were cirrus clouds chasing us as we plowed westward. At the moment they were neon pink, translucent and nearly invisible. I could just make out their sun brightened edges. The sea was calm that morning with just enough wind to ripple the water and give it texture but not enough to cause anything approaching a wave. It might have been the time I’d spent on the open ocean, but I could barely perceive the gentle rocking of the ship. Judging by our wake and the pitch of the mains we were chugging along at about 10 or 11 knots. Not fast, but a pretty good clip. I tried not to think about anything and just watch the colors change.

Part of me wished I’d pursued my artistic talents a litter harder after high school. Painting, sketching, drawing, and sculpting were fine motor skills that needed to be maintained as much as honed. Just like firing a gun accurately or becoming a precision machinist, until you reached the ten-thousand-hour mark those skills were perishable.

Moments passed and I glanced up at the high clouds. I couldn’t tell if they’d thickened or if I could just see more of them now that it was a little lighter. They’d shifted to a bright orange. Which struck me as counter intuitive since I knew the sun would be the same shade as a burning block of potassium, that odd transition color between pink and red. I tuned out the sounds of the engines and just listened to the soft hissing sigh of our progress through the water. The sunrise that far south was just fast enough that you could almost perceive the changes in color. I certainly felt the rising temperature. Each eddy of wind that slipped around the cutter to brush past me was slightly warmer than the last.

Without warning the sun breached the indistinguishable horizon; just a sliver of deep pink, almost maroon. It slid upwards growing brighter as it shifted from the sullen colors of forge heated iron set aside to cool, to the harsh yellow glare of a piece of bar stock just set on the anvil waiting for the hammer. Thinking on that made we want to take up blacksmithing of all things. It was a brute force skill that took more finesse than most were aware of.

We were somewhere around the 9th or 10th parallel so the sun did not take its time. Soon it was free of the water and the distinction between sky and sea were defined. It’d gotten too bright to watch directly so I stood and stretched again. Gingerly I moved to port and ducked around the tail rotor of our helicopter, the flight deck was just barely big enough to accommodate the aircraft.

I made my way down the flight deck ladder to the fantail. Ducking under fuel lines, 440 volt shore tie power cables, and stepping over exercise equipment I sauntered around to the mess deck port side door. It was easy to saunter on a gently rolling ship, all you had to do was walk and let the deck do all the work.

Someone was making breakfast. I poked my head in to see if it was ready. It wasn’t but there was a fresh pot of coffee brewing. I filled a cup and headed back out to sit with a shipmate at the table on the fantail. We sat and discussed the day, the past few months underway and what we’re going to do when we got back. The chest high rail around the fantail, called a bulwark, was just tall enough to hide me from the sun. It was at that uncomfortable hot stage you got just past dawn. I half suspected it had something to do with the angle of the light passing through the atmosphere; that or it was just me acclimating.

0700 rolled around and I headed back in for some chow. I had four hours of Sunday morning watch to stand. A good time to go over some scripture and do pushups to stay awake.

The patrol was winding down. I was counting the days.

This is the Aud at Sea Debrief and I am your host K.C. Aud, welcome aboard

An apology and explanation.

So its been just shy of 8 months since my last post. I wish I could say there was something huge or momentous that happened, but in truth there wasn’t. I was informed by the Second Mission Foundation that if they were going to publish the debriefs as a book, they’d have be in past tense. ALL of the debriefs were originally written in first person present tense. All one hundred sixty six thousand plus words.

I tried to build a series of prompts to get AI to make the edits from present to past tense while keeping my tone and writing style intact, but it wound up making more work than it saved. So, starting in January I decided that I was going to take a short break from the debriefs to get the remaining 200 plus pages edited before posting again. I thought it might take me 24 hours total working through a couple late nights, and while bouncing around in the back seat of my team’s work truck. I needed to do it anyway for the podcast so I might as well get it all done right away instead of doing one a week, right?

Hoo boy was I wrong.

I grossly underestimated how many hours it would take to be accurate and thorough. Also, we had a baby back in September. He was a kind of sleepy baby for the first three months. Then he never seemed to stay asleep for more than 90 minutes after that. One thing led to another and I didn’t get the editing done until July. Also, life’s ten thousand little things just pile up sometimes.

No idea when or even if the Second Mission Foundation will want to publish it. So far, they’ve only seen a few of the debriefs I’ve sent to the Havok Journal. I figure it’ll happen when it does.

Anyway, my goal is to get back to putting these out every Monday and building up a buffer so I don’t leave y’all hanging in the future.

You have my sincerest apologies and gratitude for your patience.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I saw enough parity with the southern U.S. states that if I were fluent in Spanish I could likely settle there without too much trouble. As it turns out, people are people wherever you go.

This debrief takes place in the town of Tapachula Mexico on Friday March thirteenth, twenty fifteen.

2015 03 13 Friday

As we pulled away from Ensenada, Mexico, I suspected that my thoughts on that part of the world were about to shift.

Fast forward to this patrol; I’d walked the streets of Huatulco and Tapachula Mexico, Golfito Costa Rica, and stood in the Pacific mouth of the Panama Canal and as I surmised, I’d been forced to reevaluate my views on wealth and poverty.

My perspective on personal space had also been altered as a result of living aboard the cutter, sharing 210 feet and 7 decks of steel with give or take 75 people. As I wrote this, I was lying on my stomach in my rack, propped up on a pillow with the top of my head pressed against the bunk above me, 14 inches of clearance between my mattress and the beige sheet metal against my skull. While I’d become accustomed to this, it was less than comfortable. Living out of a high school locker and the storage space under my mattress changed my thoughts on personal possessions and what was most important in life.

I’d trade every heirloom in my home for the privilege to see my wife and dogs right then, to never be more than a room away from them ever again. If I could’ve worked for free knowing that they and our extended family would be taken care of from there on out, I would’ve done so. While I wouldn’t mind a few million in disposable resources, having family close and free to pursue their dreams was worth more than any amount of money or any worldly possession.

So, what brought about all those thoughts? What changed my mind? Why was I slowly feeling drawn towards the life of an ascetic? Separation from family, related by both blood and hardship alike, showed me what life was like without them. Being six thousand miles away and knowing that I was powerless to get to them was a hopeless feeling.

Seeing the “third world” up close and personal taught me that there was a wealth of soul and character, and a wealth of things. Moving from southeast Georgia to northwest Washington showed me what an anchor my possessions could be. Losing the farm in Screven County to the bank and seeing my parents go into debt to put me through school was a lesson in what investing for the future means and how the memory of a place can be just as valuable as living there.

Shortly before pulling into port, the three ensigns aboard received news that two fellow cadets died in a car accident. They were going to graduate that spring and had just received orders for their first units. All three ensigns knew them well and were close. This set a tone of heaviness for our arrival at Puerto Madero Mexico and the nearby town of Tapachula. Taken together, all this brought my feelings into sharp focus.

We entered the port through a narrow breach in the coastline. It opened onto a pocket of water just large enough to accommodate some of the smaller cruise ships. Puerto Madero was a small beach community hugging a narrow strip of sand on the north side of the harbor; on the south was the combination cruise ship terminal and cargo port.

As we pulled in and spun to point our bow west part of me couldn’t help but wonder if it was to facilitate a quick escape. We were right at the mouth of the tiny port which consisted of only four major structures.

On the beach side were two of the largest thatch roof huts I’d ever seen; a pair of palm frond pyramids that easily stood five stories, the leaves were bleached gray by the sun. One of them supposedly housed a pool and restaurant though.

Opposite those monstrous fire hazards, at the other end of a runway’s worth of concrete, was a warehouse and a line of grain silos. The building, silos, and their attendant grain elevator immediately reminded me of home. You couldn’t pass a railhead, small town, or medium-sized farm in southeast Georgia without seeing such an arrangement. The silos were massive, enough to fill two bulk cargo carriers and have product to spare. The port probably represented a significant financial investment for the region.

Once the cutter was secured to her moorings, I headed below to change clothes. Soon, a half dozen of us were heading into town to have a look around.

Sitting in the back of the van watching the countryside roll by I felt like it could have been South Central Texas. Fields stretched for acres and acres from the road in both directions. Occasionally, we passed an orchard, but I didn’t recognize the fruit. It must have been the beginning of their growing season as everyone was in the midst of pruning back dead fall and old growth.

The homes were clustered into tiny neighborhoods of eight to ten buildings at most. They ranged from thatch roof hovels with no glass in their windows to compound-like haciendas with intricate wrought iron gates and brightly painted walls. One common factor was that every single one, mansion or shack, had a cistern of some description on the roof.

As we got closer to town, the modern world started to encroach a little more on the scenery. There was an airport nearby large enough to accommodate commercial passenger jets. Pemex, the government-owned petroleum company, was building a refinery. A little further on, there was a nearly-completed community college. That was a real shock.. I hadn’t expected to see something like a post-secondary school in this corner of the world. The next surprise was the hospital which would look right at home in any moderately sized city in the U.S.

It was at that point, I took all the misconceptions I’d built up about everything south of the Texas border and tossed them out the proverbial window. I was a stranger in a strangely familiar land.

The traffic laws were more of a suggestion there, though our driver did slow down for every Federales vehicle we passed; which were Mexican Federal Police. Barreling down the highway as only a Latin American driver can, we careened around slow farm vehicles, dodged people running through crosswalks, and weaved back and forth across painted lines on a whim. Eventually it just took too much energy to be nervous about it, so I turned my attention to the startlingly familiar world rolling by.

We saw all the industry one would associate with agricultural areas: repair shops for heavy machinery, dump truck depots, warehouses that stood empty waiting on the harvests, gravel and topsoil yards; all familiar, all could be found anywhere in the farming regions of the U.S. I guessed there were only so many ways to plow dirt and plant things. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to find the same tractors there that I’d find in the states.

It was a paradigm shift and a half.

The ag areas started giving way to more urban industry. We passed under a major state highway and were suddenly within the city limits on the south side of Tapachula. It was the developing portion of the city. High-walled neighborhoods passed by, between them were greenhouses and plant nurseries, a car dealership, and restaurant chains. And soon we pulled up to the local mall.

Globalization had truly reached far and wide. As I stepped out of the van I looked right at an AutoZone. The next building over was a place called Toks; near as I could tell it was the Mexican equivalent to Ruby Tuesdays, or TGI Fridays.

I won’t bore you with the details of the mall, it’s attached Wal-Mart, or the Holiday Inn as they may as well have been in El Paso Texas. It was comfortingly familiar and disappointing all at the same time. We bought much-needed toiletries and some other items to ease the voyage home, then piled into the van to get a look at the old town.

Shortly, the van veered off the highway into an unpaved narrow alley between old neighborhood walls. I couldn’t decide if it was the “rough” part of town or not. Having shed my previous misconceptions, I was doing my best to see the place for what it was. The vehicles all looked familiar, or at the very least like the South American production lines of U.S. manufacturers.

Most of the buildings were closed-up storefronts or long, windowless walls. Some appeared to have been converted to homes. Others had daylight shining through from the inside where their roofs have completely collapsed. A few turns later and we were back on asphalt. It must have been one of the “main drags” because the sidewalks were busy and the buildings were all open to the street.

Hotels, apartment buildings, restaurants, shops, bars; they all had their doors swung wide and their windows open. Every single one had ceiling or industrial wall fans going full tilt. The heat was thankfully dry. There were a few more modern-looking places with tinted windows and closed doors, jealously hoarding their air conditioning.

Coming to a four-way stop I was surprised by the new lighted signs on the crosswalks. The walk/don’t walk lights were LED panels that had little animated figures and a countdown timer. The closer the time got to the stoplight changing, the faster the animated figure moved. The lights were on a one minute cycle, and traffic never slowed to a crawl, even in the afternoon rush hour. Again I shook my head and wondered at it. I could remember growing up and being able to count all the stop lights in town on one hand; I wasn’t that old.

OK, so I was rapidly closing in on 30; cut me some slack.

We pulled up to the Hotel San Francisco and piled out. The floor was tile and shiny. The staff were clean, well dressed, and very helpful. There was a Trip Advisor logo on the front desk and a flat screen running one of those looped tourism videos you see in travel agencies and hotel lobbies in every vacation destination you’ve ever been to.

Some of my shipmates bickered amongst themselves over the cost of the room. The young woman behind the desk watched closely. She seemed slightly nervous and was trying not to smile at their antics; of the four I don’t think any of them were over 21. We made eye contact; I rolled mine and shook my head. She giggled. Paying their money, they took off upstairs. Sighing I turned to her and said “Lo siento por mis amigos (I’m sorry about my friends)”. She laughed again and said something back, I forgot what exactly, but I noded sagely as though I understood and followed them up.

I took a moment to feel the chagrin at living with a woman who spoke Spanish fluently and not taking the time to learn it. We passed by a rooftop pool on the second floor. There was a German family happily splashing in one end of it; it was maybe 30 by 10 feet and surprisingly deep. Continuing up, we found the room and piled in.

The hotel had done well to keep up with the times. There was a flat screen in an alcove that obviously used to house an old boxy CRT television. The AC was cold and blowing hard, though in that part of the world you had to slide your key card into a slot just inside the door to turn on the room’s power. The bathroom was tiled and spotless. I walked over to the window to stare out at Old Town.

Part of the view was obscured by a transformer bank on the left that I could feel as much as hear buzzing. It was an ominous noise, like hearing a rattlesnake just close enough to make you flinch. There wasn’t a cage to keep stupid tourists from sticking their fingers into the contacts, or warning labels to indicate that the buzzing noise signaled a quick and excruciating death. I guess they figured folks there were smart enough to figure that out on their own.

Surveying the town, I saw a lot of treetops. Upon closer inspection, I could see that many emerged from courtyards. Some were gardens, some were dirt or paved parking lots, others were just yards. Apparently, the storefronts didn’t go that deep into the blocks. I guess the Spanish and even southern European architectural influences still lingered in that part of the world. I hadn’t expected that.

The rooftops were put to use as well. Some had patios and pool tables; others had kitchens, and gardens. I took a moment to wonder what life would be like there. I wondered if I could have made a living in such a place and be happy. Other people seemed to. The two of us who didn’t get a room decided to go back out and look around. Some of the guys followed.

Walking the streets, we strolled past more open shops and restaurants. A hardware store sat back from the street just far enough to accommodate the three pickups pulled up to its doors. A stack of Quickcrete cement bags guarded one side of the door and a pallet of fertilizer the other. Looking inside I recognized brands like Ace, Dewalt, Husqvarna, and Makita, and business was brisk. We strolled on down to the town square, an area about as big as a standard city block. There was a pavilion, and an old church, AND also about four hundred kids ranging from eight year olds to high school students in uniforms of one description or another. School must have just been dismissed.

I ducked into a local convenience store called OXXO. I might as well have been in Texas. That being said, I gratefully wandered over to the freezer and pulled out a tall glass bottle Coke.” I got a few stares from the kids in the store with me. It took a moment before I realized that I was head taller than everyone else in there. I was also dressed like a security contractor: mil-spec water pack, riggers belt with paracord braids and carbineers hanging off one hip, worn hiking sandals, cargo shorts, and a wicking t-shirt. Add in the high and tight haircut, and I might as well have had “American Military” stamped on my forehead. The only thing I was missing was the black and green checkered head scarf, an M-4 carbine, and a Glock hanging from a chest rig. The attendant nervously gave me change from my 5 peso piece and we headed back outside to people watch. My companion and I bid farewell to our shipmates and we started walking back to the hotel. Eventually we succumb to the heat and snagged a cab.

Every cab in Tapachula shared one thing in common: they were privately owned and decorated. The names of the destinations they visit regularly were brightly displayed on their doors and bumpers. When the drivers stopped and called out to pedestrians, they hit a switch and strips of colored LEDs lit up and blinked to draw attention to their vehicle in particular.

One of them pulled up next to us; I leaned in and said “Walmart?” He nodded his head and responded in a string of the local dialect. I was able to make out the words “fast, 5 minutes, and 100 pesos.” A few minutes later we were jouncing down one back alley after the next. The side streets were paved with stones and long, narrow cinder blocks. The blocks lay lengthwise where the wheel ruts had worn through the locally quarried rock. Occasionally the cab found a gap where one of the blocks had deteriorated and my teeth clacked together when my skull hit the roof.

We passed by a school. Parents were greeting children and matronly teachers stood out front, making sure their charges didn’t wander into the street. Eventually we found ourselves back at the mall. We booked a room at the Holiday Inn next door, and hired another cab for 400 pesos back to the boat to get a change of clothes. The cab ride out and back was another adventure as the driver was even less inclined to obey the laws than our hired van driver was.

About an hour later we got to our room, showered, and sat down to our modern conveniences. I checked in with the world via my phone and watched HBO with Spanish subtitles. Then I watched Spanish HBO with English subtitles. I couldn’t decide which was more entertaining. Eventually I broke out my bottle of Kraken Black Rum and the 1 liter of Coke, both purchased at Walmart for about 12 dollars in pesos.

I sat on the couch in the air conditioning to watch the sunset over the coast. I closed my eyes and immediately had to brace against something as I started to compensate for a non-existent sea and almost fell over. Sleep eventually overtook me and I slipped into a nap to revel in the feeling of a consistently cool room with a floor that wasn’t moving.

The rest of our stay passed quickly. We ventured down to an unassuming exterior storefront attached to the mall called the City Pub. Poking our heads in, we found it to be an Irish Pub. Shaking my head at the incongruity, I ordered a Mexican beer in the “Irish Pub” while listening to American rock songs that were popular when I was a sophomore in high school. Oh, and there was a European soccer game on TV. At that point, if a group of tourists from South East Asia walked in, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Several more shipmates wandered in and we celebrated not being on the boat as we flirted with the two waitresses in broken Spanish. They spoke perfect English and were making fun of my under 21 shipmates who thought they had a chance. I sat back in the corner drinking my Victorias, Coronas, and Dos Eques and watched my coworkers blow off steam. I kept the beer buzz at a minimum, lest I had to make a judgment call.

Growing a little older and gaining experience had calmed me down a bit. I didn’t sit coiled and tense like a clock spring anymore, thinking violence was waiting around the corner if someone in a bar had a drink. Ten years of not getting into bar fights had helped a little. That being said, I wanted to be able to respond should my luck run out. Soon enough, it was time for bed and we wandered back to the hotel. There I spoke with my wife for a while until my drunken roommate intruded on our conversation. She and I both gave up talking to one another as he was intent on being a part of the call. I went to bed tired and frustrated by the distance.

We spent the next day in the hotel. There wasn’t much to see in town, and we really just wanted to be off the boat. I managed to get in another phone call and felt better for hearing my wife’s voice, for hearing her laugh and our dogs talk to her. I couldn’t decide if hearing her voice was more of a relief than it was painful. That kind of distance over that kind of time with little communication is how strong men are broken. E-mail had been my saving grace there.

Somewhere in the day I took the time to read some of the warning labels on the bathroom wall. Unless I’d mistranslated the sign, I needed to be aware of burning earthquakes. I eventually located an English version of the sign and sure enough they meant burning earthquakes. My mind finally made the connection and I remembered the particularly steep mountain just visible through the haze to the northwest.

I’d booked a hotel in the shadow of an active volcano.

Perfect.

My perspective on life again thoroughly rattled, I kicked back for a nap and evening fell. We wandered back to the City Pub one more time. I sat and let the world happen around me. My roommate struck up a conversation with two of the locals. They spoke English with Texas accents. Apparently, they managed one of the lime orchards down there. A couple of good ol’ boys just come into town with their girls after a day in the dirt. I shook my head at yet one more incongruity and tapped my foot in time to another song I knew.

Morning came quickly. I showered and we grabbed the complimentary breakfast before hiring a cab to the boat. Soon I was shaved, dressed in uniform, and standing in the mess deck for the briefing and pass-down.

Just like that, Mexico was another label on a chart. Something was nagging at me, though. I had trouble focusing on the officers in front of me. My mind kept going over everything I saw, heard, and touched. I kept seeing details flash by in an unending loop. I really had no idea such a place existed.

Coming back to the present, I overheard some of the crew complaining about how dull the coffee plantation tours were. Part of me wanted to say “well duh, it’s a coffee farm. Unless you’re really into agriculture or had a hard interest in how they harvest beans, you’re not going to get much out of it.” There’s a reason most industrial-grade plantations and farms don’t cater to tourists; they’re too busy getting the job done.

I hadn’t drunk enough water the night before and I felt the dehydration making me grumpy. I ignored my shipmates, grabbed some coffee, and headed up to the OPCEN to prep a chart. We’d be getting underway soon, and I wanted to hydrate before we hit heavy seas again and the pounding waves teamed up with the creeping hangover.

After we secured from navigation detail and we’re thoroughly out to sea, I retreated to my usual place on the bridge wing to watch the sunset and think. I saw some fairly abject poverty, and I saw true wealth. I saw people scratching by to make a living and content with their existence. I saw hopes and dreams, successes and failures in the making. I was reminded of my hometown and the region I grew up in.

I thought back to Ensenada from my last patrol, Panama City, and Golfito Costa Rica and wonder what life would be like in those places. I’d need some new skill sets for sure, but I picked those up like bad habits. Come to think of it, some of those skills were considered bad habits in certain parts of polite society. I failed to suppress a mischievous grin and the ensign on the bridge glanced at me a little nervously. Most of the junior officers were nervous around me, or at the very least professionally distant out of a healthy fear of guilt by association.

I made the inevitable comparison between life aboard the cutter and that of life in Tapachula: few personal possessions, long hours, a family that loved me dearly, the occasional drink and night out with friends… This world was vast, unfamiliar, and at the end of the day, normal. If I’d learned anything bouncing around from place to place, it was that people were people, regardless of where you went.

End of Brief

Footnotes

There’s not much to say in the way of technical details. I made it a point on that port call to stay away from the boat.

In retrospect I should have expected more American influence considering that it was a cruise ship stopover. You just, you get it in your head that you’re going to a foreign country and are a little disappointed to find Walmart, Holiday Inn, and Auto Zone there waiting for you.

To be completely honest I spent most of that port call being introspective and slightly inebriated. Which, considering some of the other things I could have gotten into, that’s not a bad way to spend it.

This is the Aud at Sea Debrief and I am your host K.C. Aud, welcome aboard.

Where else does a person wake up way too early in the morning to coordinate via radio with an air asset they never see, to help guide ship full military law enforcement personnel on a mission to intercept a target in the middle of the ocean. Only to have said target be a legit fishing vessel? Where else does that kind of thing become the hum drum, just another day routine?

This debrief takes place somewhere off the western coast of Central America on Saturday March seventh, twenty fifteen.

2015 03 07 Saturday

I woke up to my alarm at 0300. I had watch in a few minutes. I rolled onto my stomach and slid out of my rack, searching with my toes for my shower shoes. Though I’d yet to experience it, the floor was supposedly crawling with bacteria and germs that could cause all sorts of interesting and irritating foot related diseases. The constant moisture of living aboard a ship and wearing combat boots 18 hours a day only compounded the effect.

That was the reason for the shower shoes as well as the reason our berthing cubicle perpetually smelling like mold, deodorant, and blue bottle Gold Bond. I pondered the less pleasant combinations of odors that I’d encountered in life as I added a fresh bit of powder to each boot and tapped the toes against my palm to ensure an even distribution. That had become a ritual every time I woke up and pulled on my boots. On occasion I’d done it before putting on my pants, which always led to a great deal of quiet profanity in the dark. You’ve not understood difficulty until you’ve put on your boots then tried to put on your pants in a ship rolling around in the dark. Moments later I staggered to the galley for fresh coffee. I had the 0400 to 0800 OPCEN watch.

I watched the coffee sway left then right then back to left as we pitched in the building seas. The last dregs and grounds dribbled out of the urn and I hit the toggle switch that starts the next pot brewing. If I understood the schematics correctly, and the tangle of plumbing behind the coffee maker, the device was tied directly into the ships steam system, or at least the one in galley. I could have been wrong, it was dark back there and I did my best to remain ignorant of where the water and food on that boat came from.

Anyway, judging by the groans, pings, and shlurping noises that issued from the battered and stained coffee maker I felt certain that there was a rather abrupt reduction from the low pressure steam line that we heated the ship with, to the 1/8^th inch copper line feeding it. With my nearly bullet-proof coffee mug filled, I ponderously wandered up to my all too familiar watch station in the OPCEN. Occasionally we took a roll and the water bottle hanging from my hip made a loud “thunk” against the bulkhead. I winced every time at the noise. My shipmates were trying to sleep.

Watch passed without incident. ET2 Bravo and I spent the time discussing fellow shipmates, the merits of various cooking techniques and what it was like for him to grow up in Death Valley. Despite the name, it’s actually a rather beautiful place. I had the chance to see it in person when I stopped by there for a weapons test a few years back.

Anyway, soon it was light enough out that he could stand down the FLIR watch and he headed below. My watch relief showed up around 0715, I handed off the OPCEN watch and headed up to the bridge to watch the sun climb for a while. That early in the morning it was still relatively cool out, even at that low latitude.

The seas had built considerably. We were plowing along at a safe sane 8 knots and the relative wind cutting across our starboard bow was an easy 25 knots. The swells were at 8 feet and waves at 3. The combined 11 foot vertical travel was enough that they closed off the foc’sul to all foot traffic.

I headed back down, got some chow, and then spent the remainder of the morning talking with an observer aircraft as it vectored us in on a potential target. By mid afternoon it turned out to be a legitimate fishing boat and we stood down from our high readiness posture to one of fatigue and frustration. It was difficult to stay keyed up for hours on end just to find out it was all for naught.

I took a break from the crowded windowless OPCEN and headed back up to the bridge. My least favorite person was up there. He gave me a dirty look and I simply avoided him. He was an ass that would find fault with everyone but himself or his own people. It made me smile inside knowing that my existence annoyed him. It was a good thing that I rarely had the opportunity to be malicious. Cruelty was never far from my reach, and I had an exhaustive imagination.

I pushed him from my mind and stood at the bridge rail, arms braced wide I leaned back against one of gyro compass repeaters. There’s one on each side of the bridge wing. On top of each is a spotting scope, a little prism inside the scope lets the spotter, known as a bearing and range taker, see the reading from the gyro compass as well as what they’re sighting on. This is so they can spot visual points of reference and call out the bearings for the navigation plotter inside the bridge. When not in use those posts also serve as an excellent prop to lean against in heavy seas.

I heard one of the bridge watch standers call out. “True winds sustained at 35 knots, gusting at 38.” I turned my head to listen to the rest of the report and was suddenly slapped in the face by sea spray.

I flinched and gripped the rail. The cutter surged upwards on a swell then dropped. My stomach climbed up over my heart and we damn near buried the bow. I felt my weight press down on my knees and the soles of my feet. The impact of the ship against the water registered individually in each of my vertebra. We surged upwards again and I remembered to bend my knees and lean forward off the post.

The watch stander was calling out wind speeds again and I could hear the strain in his voice as he fought to hold on, stay up right, and keep everything on the chart table from winding up on the deck. No one had time to be nauseated, we were all too busy holding on for dear life. Then, as suddenly as the pitching swells came, they disappeared. We were back to the steady undulating roll over 8 foot swells and 3 foot waves. Those last few must have topped out at 18 feet by themselves. Rogue waves driven by a sustained gust.

I was fairly damp and in the steady breeze I could feel the salt drying on my skin and in my hair. I heard the familiar squeak of a squeegee on glass. One of the non-rates was busy cleaning windows. It was a futile gesture. Not 10 minutes later we hit another small mountain range of water, and once again took spray on the bridge.

I looked out over the endless march of waves. The wind was a constant buffeting roar; like sticking your head out the window of a car doing 40 miles an hour. There were true white caps all the way to the horizon, easily 8 to 10 miles visibility. The wind and waves coming at us from the Northeast slammed into our starboard bow trying to push us off course with every impact. The windward bow wave crashed into the oncoming seas and frothed like breakers on a coastline of boulders. Mist and spray climbed up the hull to rip across the decks and rigging leaving a patina of salt. On the leeward side, it just rolled down swell, foaming and breaking over itself till it was just another white cap riding the wind.

Looking to our stern I watched the distinct zigzag pattern of our wake as we plowed forward. On calm days it could be seen trailing behind us for mile and miles; all the way to where the water and sky blended into that seamless blue. That day, the sea was a jagged edged mix of stark white and nearly blue black. Each time the bow pitched down our screws nearly breached the surface. They churned the foam into the dark waters and left a bright neon blue rip across the ocean. The painter and photographer in me was constantly taking note of the contrasts in colors.

Thinking on it, the Coast Guard has made a point of contrasting colors; orange equipment, white ships, blue uniforms. That came to mind as I watched the colors in the water blend in the background while our rather conspicuously orange helicopter strained against its tie downs with each swell. I guessed that particular paint scheme was a good one as it stood out well against the sea and sky.

I forgot to pay attention to the cutter’s movements and my stomach started climbing. There was the inevitable hollow boom of the bow finding a hole in the water. I bent my knees just in time and caught no small amount of water across my shoulders. At least I was facing aft that time. Immediately chilled by the wind I decided to head indoors.

I was overdue for a nap anyways.

End of Brief

2015 03 02 Monday

Spending most of my younger years and adult life in the South acclimated my body and mindset to the heat and humidity. At some point complaining about how hot it is just stops being worth the effort to say the words.

Spending four years as a volunteer fire fighter served to further ingrain the mental process of simply ignoring heat. It just stops being an issue and becomes an environmental factor to keep track of. Moving to the Pacific Northwest started me on the road to acclimate to the other end of spectrum. Summer starts on the Olympic Peninsula in July.

Sitting there on the mess deck I was truly missing the cold weather. One might say I was overdressed for my environment. I had on my standard issue working blue ODUs, Operational Dress Uniform, and then some extra items.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Top Gun or any other film involving U.S. Navy personnel operating planes from an aircraft carrier, then you’ve seen the teams of people wearing different colored vests. Red for fire fighters, purple for jet fuel handlers, yellow for landing safety officer, blue for tie downs, etcetera. The vests are made from a heavy flame retardant material, similar to canvas and come equipped with a self inflating life vest, strobe light, and other bits of gear that poke you in uncomfortable places if you slouch at the wrong angle.

Around my neck and under the shoulders of the vest was a Nomex hood that I’d pull over my head when it came time to go out. Over my ODU pants was a pair of rather shiny fire fighter pants. They were the standard three-layer bunker pants with an additional metalized layer that supposedly to allow their wearer to work while kneeling in a puddle of burning jet fuel. I had yet to test that theory. The matching bunker coat on a hook to my left had the same additional layer as did the helmet and its external hood that I had propped on one knee. I never thought I’d find a size 12 boot that would be too small or that didn’t have any room in the heel. Yet there I sat, boots too small and tight in the heels.

My partner sitting across the table from me was similarly attired. We were dressed funny and sweating profusely because we were standing by as Proxymen. Our job was fairly simple. When the helicopter landed on deck and needed a hot refuel, which is topping off the tanks while it’s spun up, we headed out in our shiny clothes and knelt next to the fueling port with a Purple Potassium Powder, or PKP, extinguisher just in case something happened.

Looking around the mess deck I watched my shipmates. They’re dressed out as well, some in red, some in purple all with glasses of ice water in hand. Unlike me they only wore the vests and a matching flame retardant long sleeve t-shirt. They also wore something called a cranial. A strange canvas and plastic plate helmet with incorporated goggles and full over the ear hearing protection.

At the moment, their cranials were serving as pillows, elbow props, buckets, and knee warmers. Though why anyone would need to keep their knees warm in that weather was beyond me. The mess deck sat directly over the Main Diesel Engines so even in the winter if both engines were up and running it could get uncomfortably warm; especially if it was full of people.

Both engines were running and the room was full of people. We were also at the tenth parallel so February wasn’t exactly chilly.

A voice called out over the intercom “GREEN DECK!”. In unison we all repeated the call, “green deck!” to acknowledge that we’ve heard. I wadded my foam earplugs in then pulled my hood up to snug it down to my scalp leaving only my eyes exposed. Leaning forward I turned and glanced at the television mounted over my head, the helo, short for helicopter, was hovering just off our stern.

Next I pulled on the inner layer gloves, then the bunker coat. I could hear the rapid wopwopwopwopwopwopwop of the helicopter closing in. The flight deck where it lands is directly over the mess deck where we were sitting. If it crashed hard enough it would have made for a lovely new buffet table.

Standing up I watched the screen as I finished with the row of buttons then the heavy spring loaded hooks that kept the coat secure. There was a noticeable whine in the air now. That would be the twin gas turbine engines that drive the relatively small main helicopter rotor. The pilots cut power and she droped the last three feet to the deck; THUMP.

The intercom barked “AMBER DECK”; “AMBER DECK!” we replied. I donned my helmet and ratchet down the inner ring in place around my skull. That done I fumbled to arrange the silvery mantle that covered the helmet and draped down over my shoulders. Last were the heavy external gloves that gave me all the dexterity of a frostbitten drunkard. I could grip things but beyond that the only other thing I could do is make rude gestures and press elevator buttons.

I turned to look at my partner. All I saw was my reflection in his mirrored face shield. The heat of the room pressed in against the heat trapped in the suit with me. I’d lost several inches off my waist and hips to sweating in this damn suit on that patrol alone.

There were gaps at my waistline that weren’t there a month before; the sweat was running in rivulets down my body and through those places where the cloth had bunched under my belt. I could feel it pooling in my boots. We turned and strode from the mess deck and down the main passageway with the purple garbed fueling team in tow.

Up a ladder well and out onto the starboard side flight deck. Even during daylight hours, it was fairly dark with the helmet visor down. At dusk it was even darker. I made my way aft, ducking low to avoid the hydraulic arms holding a small boat in its cradle. I felt my way along the exterior bulkhead to the edge of the flight deck, right where the 02 deck superstructure ends. Reaching down I hauled the heavy steel cylinder of potassium powder and CO2 to my side then leaned around the edge of the super structure to gesture toward the yellow garbed LSO, or landing safety officer; I was ready. It took a few waves but they finally saw me.

Everything was painted shades of green in the dim glow from the flight deck lights. The tips of the helicopter blades made a ghostly halo around the aircraft. Even through all the layers of clothing I could feel the air pressure of each blade tip as it passed by overhead hundreds of times a second; like feeling the buffeting from a desk fan.

Kneeling I waited for the signal.

The flight mechanic, who was standing next to the helicopter gestured at the LSO who then turned to me and gave the go ahead. No verbal communication, you can’t trust a radio in that situation. Crouching, I ran forward extinguisher in hand. I moved aft down the starboard edge of the flight deck avoiding the tie down straps then knelt just behind the fueling port to the left of the flight mechanic. Once I got in place the LSO sent out the fueling team.

One of them clamped a grounding cable in place while the other picked up the fuel nozzle. The helicopter must be grounded to the deck because the rotors generated enough static electricity to kill a man. I took a moment to look around. Some of the flight deck lights were above the “disk” formed by the blades. They added a surreal strobe effect to the already eerie scene. The two fuel handlers drug the six-inch-thick hose up the bird and plugged it in. I watched in the near darkness for any drips or sparks from fuel port; any indication that the fuel hose or aircraft may catch fire.

If that thing did go boom, my job was to expend the full load of powder in my extinguisher to keep the flames at bay while the fueling team and flight mechanic get clear. I could assure you that they would get away safely. I planned to bodily throw them over the side of the ship then follow them in if need be.

Crouching there under the spinning blades I could feel the five layers of fabric bunch and pinch around my knees. Occasionally the airflow would shift and a blast of jet exhaust washed over me, just hot enough to be felt through the metalized bunker gear. The fueling team got the signal from the fight mechanic and they disconnected then back away. I waited for them to pull the hose free, disconnect the grounding line and crouch at the edge of the rotors. When they finally knelt the LSO gave me the signal and I crouch ran to hunch just behind the fueling team. Once there, we got up as one and ran to the relative safety of the starboard side super structure, just aft of the small boat.

I set down my extinguisher and stood idle with the tie down team members and fire fighters. We watched passively as the pilots moved around inside the cockpit making their checks. Standing just at the edge of the flight deck I could see the LSO gesturing and cocking his head to one side to listen to instructions via his radio. He was the only one besides the pilots to have voice comms with the bridge. It was a single point of failure but it kept the confusion to a minimum.

As the helicopter went through its preflight we waited. The tie down crew, fire team, my partner and myself are all lit by blue chem lights hooked to our chests. Through the visor I could only make out the little blue bars of light. Everything else was outlined as a surreal green profile like the old monochromatic computer games I used to play on a black and green screen IBM computer.

My clothes were sticking to my skin everywhere, I’d soaked them through with sweat. There was a small gap between my face and where the Nomex hood crosses the bridge of my nose. I could feel the hot air trapped in my suit escaping through it. I reached up and flipped my visor out of the way for a moment.

Looking West I was treated with the beautiful afterglow of the last few moments of a Pacific sunset over a flat calm sea. It was nearly black overhead. The only remaining light was the ten degrees of sky just off the horizon. A thin line of gold faded to orange then deep red then quickly through purple to a darkness that was only deepened by the flight deck landing lights. It was the last light of day. Watching that sky I was, for a moment, able to forget the stress of the day and just be.

The noise from the rotor changed pitch. Automatically I flipped my visor down and turned to face the helicopter. The tie down crew had taken off the helicopter’s restraints and she was spinning up for takeoff. I moved forward and placed myself bodily in between the tie down and refueling teams, and the helicopter. If that thing comes down the least I could do was offer some protection from the fire ball; the fuel tanks are in the belly which usually hit first in a helicopter crash.

The noise changed pitch again and the machine leapt off the deck. It hovered for a moment almost as though it couldn’t decide what direction it should go. This is what the pilots called the “hover check”, a brief span of time where they make sure nothing has come lose and all the gauges are where they’re supposed to be. Then, in one smooth motion it peeled away to port to disappear into the night, vanishing like an apparition. The only evidence of its passing was the fading sound of its engines. I took a moment to sit with the fuel team while they performed a visual check on the fuel quality before we tromped back inside.

To the uninitiated checking the fuel sounds like it involves complex test equipment with charts and a digital read out. In reality, they fill up a glass jar, hold it to the light, then swirl it around to look for particulates and water.

It would be a while before the helicopter came back and I had time to take a break from my personal sauna. Peeling out of that set of bunker gear was a chore. It was slightly too small for me, and I had to plan my escape accordingly. There was a larger set on order, but it would be six months before I saw it.

Five minutes after I got the helmet off, I extracted my foot from the boot and wiggled my toes gratefully. It felt as though I’d lost gallons of water to sweat. My clothing stuck to me and for a while all I could do was cool down and drink copious amounts of water. People were starting to put away gear and clean the galley up.

That’s right, I’d forgotten the helicopter was transferring to another cutter so we wouldn’t see them again that night. Eventually I gathered my strength and stowed my own gear, then helped with putting all the other fight gear away.

There was a shower calling my name.

End of Brief

This debrief takes place in the narrow moments between sleep when all that matters is staying alert just long enough to get the job done. I wrote it outbound from the Pacific approach to the Panama Canal on Wednesday February twenty fifth twenty fifteen.

2015 02 25 Wednesday

I’d been reading about the Panama Canal my entire life. I remembered the black and white pictures of the old steam shovels carving away at the mountains and the image of Teddy Roosevelt sitting in a crane in his white suit. I’d seen the National Geographic Specials about its construction, the floors that could be raised to prevent its collapse from bombing and the Japanese submarine aircraft carrier that surrendered there at the end of World War II. Never in my life did I think that I would one day be standing on the deck of a ship as it passed under the Bridge of the Americas…

It was early morning, approximately 0415 Eastern Standard Time. All I could smell was fuel. The Cutter was tied up at the relatively small (200 yards long) military piers on the West side of the Southern mouth of the canal. The canal itself ran in a NW-SE direction, I was unaware of this until I had to plot our navigation approach. The odor was a pervasive mixture of bunker fuel, kerosene, and high sulfur diesel. I was sure there were other petroleum distillates in the mix, but I couldn’t pick them out. I could barely smell my burnt coffee.

At the adjacent pier rested a pair of 300-foot tankers, the source of the smell. Opposite us was a Chinese bulk cargo carrier. The blue tinged orange glow of flood lamps illuminated everything in an unearthly light. This particular pier had no shore tie for power so all four ships, the tankers, the Cutter, and the bulk freighter grumbled quietly as their generators kept the darkness at bay. We’d pulled in about eight hours ago and the crew of the Chinese vessel had been busy since. Like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie this foreign port had a certain laid back industrious feel to it. Everyone was working but no one seemed to be in a hurry.

I stood on the flight deck, a radio on one hip counter balancing the weight of a substantial water bottle on the other. I was supposed to be in full uniform; blouse with rolled sleeves, cover (hat), shined boots and at the very least clean pants.

I was not.

I was on my first cup of coffee. I had only managed to get in a quick nap between 0025 and 0330. We were making this particular port call because we’d managed to wrap a significant portion of a drift net around the port side propeller shaft and had spent the last 60 hours limping along on one screw. It’d been a long two and a half days. The tedium had worn on everybody.

There was a faint layer of what I had come to call “cutter dust” ground into the fabric of my pants and the creases of my palms. My boots bore the scars of long hours moving about an all steel and non-skid environment. I’d been awake for about an hour, and the sweat had already made dark patches on my t-shirt. As soon as I stepped outside I half expected to be called down for my rough appearance and five-o-clock shadow. The first person I encountered was a chief who looked to be in more or less the same state of disrepair as myself; we traded nods and set about our tasks.

There was a silent agreement amongst the enlisted members of the crew. This was Panama. No one cared if the deck gang of a rusting, 40 year old refrigerated cargo ship was impressed with how shiny our boots were. By all accounts they looked to be in worse shape than we did.

I stood at the rail and watched with mild interest as the crew of said cargo ship methodically went about their work. The hydraulic whine of the cranes was a familiar sound in a foreign place. Cargo nets piled high with non-descript white bags rose out of the hold, frost and cold air pouring off them in the sweltering morning darkness. The long single span booms of the cranes rose and fell like pump jacks in the southwest U.S. Each load was deposited on a platform made from 50 gallon drums, sheets of sun bleached plywood and cargo pallets. The platforms were the exact height of the cargo box of a semi trailer. A half dozen men had the net unloaded and its contents tossed into the trailer in less than a minute; it rose again to off load the next 500 pounds of frozen product. Everything was a half shade of orange under the flood lamps; the ships, the people, their cargo, all of it half orange half something else. The ship was a relic, much like ours, old and out of place amongst the bustling shiny new hulks that slid by with barely a whisper.

Time passed and I pondered my surroundings. It was growing lighter in the East. Dawn approached.

Thomas L. Friedman wrote a book called The World Is Flat. In it he presented the idea that commerce and trade had “flattened” the world by breaking down the barriers that once separated one culture from the next. Looking around I could see evidence of this. Warning labels were printed in multiple languages, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, French… I saw car designs that wouldn’t be out of place in Texas or Georgia. Even the roughest of dock workers down there on the pier had a touch screen phone; like every tourist I’d ever seen they stopped to take a picture of me, the cutter, and the shiny helicopter perched on our flight deck. People were people everywhere you went.

All anyone ever hears about the canal was that it joins the two oceans. I had no idea about the scale of industry surrounding each end of “the ditch”. This place easily competed with the busiest ports anywhere in North America. I’d clambered up to the flying bridge on top of the wheelhouse. Making use of the “Big Eyes” binoculars I scanned the ports on the opposite side of the canal. The containers were stacked twenty high and there was a ceaseless movement as the big gantry cranes loaded and off loaded billions of dollars in goods every hour. They had been going nonstop since we pulled in the night before.

The great container ships, bulk carriers, and tankers slid by in an endless parade in the growing predawn light. They left barely a ripple in the water. This bothered me a little bit. Something that large should have left more than a one foot wake when it passed by, no matter how slow it was moving. Some rode high and empty, blotting out everything behind them. Others trudged through low and laden, with maybe a 20 foot freeboard. They were pregnant with the offspring of commerce and trade, ponderously making their way to give birth. Pun intended.

I hesitated to use that analogy but at the moment it was the best I was able to prod loose from my sleep deprived gray matter. I’d think of something better once the sun was up and I was on my second pot of go juice.

An hour later.

The light transitioned from the shallow peach morning haze common to coastal areas, to a definite glaring brightness in the East. The sun painted a hard morning glow on the edge of every piece of metal and glass it touched. Each reflective surface was the burning tip of a blade fresh from a blacksmith’s forge.

The Bridge of the Americas was a glowing lacework of steel girders and sunlit filaments. In the distance I could see the towers and skyscrapers of Panama City shining brightly. Their tops just peaking over the mountains of shipping containers standing between them and the water that funded their rise.

I turned the Big Eyes south and sighted down the long arrow straight buoy chain. A hulking leviathan of a ship was plowing up the channel. It moved with the unhurried and assured pace of a force of nature. In the distant sea haze of mid-morning, I could see its brethren lurking like monsters in the deep. They were just shadows of shadows at this range; darker patches in the building heat shimmer. The sun was fully up now. I’d have commented on the significant spike in temperature but I’d learned to endure it like I did the cold. The only difference being I drank at least four liters of water a day.

My radio chattered, they needed someone to hoist colors. I clambered down to the part of the bridge behind the mast and started fiddling with the halyards, pennants, and flags. It had been a while since I had had to do this so I spent a little time ensuring each flag was on its correct halyard and raised them. POW-MIA on the port center, prep pennant starboard outboard, Panamanian flag starboard inboard, bravo flag port outboard. I worked my way down the dozen lines secured to the rail, some flags I kept lowered and ready for when they were needed, others went up immediately. The sun was fully up by then, soon they would make a pipe for colors detail and officers would be arriving. I should have laid below and gotten back to the OPCEN as I was sure there was message traffic waiting for me on the secure net, but ye gods I wanted some sleep.

Hours later… Around 1140 I was granted permission to get some sleep. Ten hours on watch with two hours sleep to back it up. I crashed hard and awoke to the familiar thrum in the metal of my rack. It had become such a part of my existence that I woke up when it ceased; we were underway. I rolled out of my rack and damn near pitched over into the forward bulkhead. My inner ear hadn’t quite caught up and we were bow into the currents that made this part of the world an interesting area to navigate.

I wandered outside. It was early evening. Looking around the cutter in the wan and fading light I could see examples of every type of cargo ship to ever ply those waters. Our heading was on or about 180 degrees (south); I took a moment to orient myself. The sun was setting behind land, so the low mountains maybe five miles to our starboard made up the Southern Panamanian peninsula. We would have to transit around that to get back to our target area. I mentally shuffled through the stacks of navigation charts in my head and did some ugly math to figure our transit time back to the target area. A vivid memory of navigating with paper maps while on road trips popped into my head.

I would stare hard at the pages, watch the mile markers and exit numbers tick by then do the simple arithmetic to give the distance to our next exit. As a child I never thought that years later those skills would come into play when I started driving cross country to North Carolina, Key West, and Texas during the summers. I was 18 and color GPS with preloaded maps didn’t exist on everyone’s phones yet. Hell, the dash mounted units were hundreds of dollars. I’d sit down the morning of my departure with a glass of sweet tea and quickly reference my well worn and dog eared Rand McNally road atlas. In ten minutes I’d have a route picked out and be in my beat up, red F-150, outbound on a 17 hour non-stop run. While reminiscing I should point out that gas was $0.80 a gallon and I could drive 1200 miles for $90 in that old truck.

Back to the cutter, it was dark enough then that the ships lights had energized. I couldn’t quite make out the warning labels on the machine gun I was leaning against, though by then I had them memorized. In areas where Muslim clerics climbed their towers to sing the calls to prayer the day began when one could tell the gray hairs from the dark in a man’s beard. It ended when one could no longer make that distinction. I guessed I would have to settle for the hot gun/cold gun procedures stamped on the shield plate of an M2 Browning .50 cal. I had watch again in a few minutes. I got back inside to see what was up.

This debrief covers a few days on a port call down there and was written on Wednesday February eighteenth, twenty fifteen.

2015 02 18 Wednesday

I could only assume that it was a typical February afternoon in Golfito Costa Rica. The broken cloud cover moving slowly out of the North rolled over the low mountains that surrounded the long bay we were moored in. They were too big to be hills, but not really mountains either. Foothills maybe? Either way they were big enough to affect the weather. Covered in thick Central American jungle they came right up to the water’s edge leaving a strip of land maybe a quarter mile, or less, wide for the main road and town. They were the deep green of rain forest, and their bird call soundtrack was straight out of a movie.

The beach, such as it was, was dotted with long narrow open topped fishing boats called pangas. About one in five had a flimsy metal frame supporting a tarp or tin canopy. The covered ones were the water taxis that ran the locals and tourists to and from the nearby islands. The town was the standard mix of first world progress and abject poverty sitting side by side, homes and businesses clung to the base of the foothills at the water’s edge like multi-colored barnacles on a rocky shore. Every other block had an eclectic mix of locals, motorcycles, flat-bed trucks, dogs of questionable lineage, and iguanas.

On my walk the day before I wound up in a place called Banana Bay. It was a combination bar, restaurant, marina, and hotel with wood floors, a rusty corrugated tin roof, copious ceiling fans, and extremely comfy chairs.

Also, extremely tasty milkshakes.

I ordered a plain vanilla ice cream shake and poured half of a Mexican coke into it once I’d made room in the glass. I kept expecting Jimmy Buffet to pull his boat up with a guitar in one hand and a bottle of black rum in the other.

The sun got lower, and we wandered back to the cutter to pick up some shipmates. I’d seen Che Guevara’s stylized image printed on just about everything from t-shirts to lunch boxes. That day, I saw it painted on the front end of an old steam locomotive… and I completely forgot to get a picture. Strangely enough it was located right next to the Costa Rican Coast Guard building, God only knew how long it had been sitting there.

Later in the evening we found ourselves at a resort that at any place in the US would have been an easy four stars. Despite being over chlorinated and warm, the pool was glorious. The rum and cokes were rather weak though; a professional bar tender could have made a killing down there.

Two shipmates who will remain nameless were making what they thought was excellent progress with what they thought were two female guests at the resort. Turns out the ladies weren’t guests, and they charged by the hour. I didn’t think we would ever let them live that down and it puts that mischievous smirk on my face every time I think about it.

Since I had duty the next day I headed back to the cutter and had been aboard since late the night before. Right then, I had my head and shoulders through one of the escape scuttles in the forward bulkhead of OPCEN. I couldn’t see much besides the North end of the bay, but every time I turned around the view was straight off a post card so I couldn’t complain.

Since dawn the sky had gotten ever so slightly darker and more crowded; increasing in layers. At the time I could only assume that it meant rain. Guessing the weather on a strip of land less than a few hundred miles wide, split down the middle by a significant mountain range, with an ocean to either side was a mental exercise I wasn’t prepared to engage in.

My assumptions though, had turned out to be right.

Around 1600 the rain started. It was steady and light and would take a good ten minutes to truly soak a person. The cloud cover was still broken, and the mottled hues of early sunset were backlighting the clouds over the mountain to the Northwest. It was a mélange of every color of a summer sunset and every storm cloud I’d ever seen. The shifting green backdrop of the surrounding jungle only made the tableau all the more vivid. The wind died with the onset of the rain, leaving the bay to reflect everything back like a smoked mirror. There wasn’t a ripple on the water for a thousand yards. It would have taken a master painter to recreate that moment, and an author with decades of writing under their belt to make you see it.

I was an amateur with a paint brush, and you know firsthand the extent of my writing abilities; you have my sincerest apologies.

We were sharing the rather long pier with a purse seiner; it was large enough to have a crow’s nest mid ship and an LOH6 scout helicopter, or I guess a Hughes MD 500 if you’re being technical, perched on the flying bridge. La Rosa Mistique was painted across the bow. It was easily as long as the cutter. Judging by the rust and the lines of her hull, probably just as old too. I had to wonder at the similarities and differences between life on the Rosa Mistique and the CGC Active.

As if the two derelict steam locomotives weren’t a big enough hint, most of the local construction, the pier included, seemed to have been supplemented with salvaged railroad tracks. Literally everywhere I looked I could see the painted butt end of a rail sticking out from some part of the pier. Come to think of it they were all over the town as well.

Looking at the long narrow strip of concrete and steel we were moored to, I could only guess at its length, maybe 1500 feet? It was a relic from the days when the banana trade made this town a wealthier place. Part of me hoped this place would stay small so I could come back in 40 years when I retired and run a diving charter from the resort. Who knew though, maybe by then it would be a choice spot for cruise ships like Huatulco.

I’d had about as much as I could stand of OPCEN for the moment and wandered outside for a break. Standing at the rail in the rain I wondered at what life would be like living there. Would I want a place back in the hills away from everyone, or an oversized live aboard sail boat rigged for diving?

The clouds were relentlessly shifting overhead like God’s own kaleidoscope. Looking across the bay into the jungle I could see smoke from cook fires rising from the start of evening meals. Part of me wished the breeze were up so I could get a whiff of whatever it was, but I knew that would only be torture as I was sure it smelled delicious. I wished we were going to be there for a few more days. There were zip line tours, jungle hikes, and canyon runs available to tourists. A couple of my shipmates wandered off and wound up hanging out with Skippy; some sort of local go-to guy that knew everyone and all the secrets. They spent the better part of the day with him wandering around all the nooks and crannies. One of them was relaying their story to a group of folks out on the flight deck. I listened closely; as the rain pattered off the bill of my standard issue ball cap I was more than a little jealous. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would wind up there again someday, with any luck Skippy would still be around. I had been out on deck thirty minutes by then, it was time to head back in and check the secure network and radios.

Sitting there in the dark of the OPCEN I was having to revamp my opinions of that part of the world. Spending the first two years of my professional career chest deep in law enforcement intelligence had cast everything south of Brownsville Texas in a rather negative light. This place might not have been a small fishing town on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, but there were genuinely good people there trying to make it work. They were doing their best to provide for themselves and loved ones. I could only wonder what this place would be if it had an individual willing to invest in it.

If I’d learned anything on that venture South it was that there was potential everywhere you went. You just had to be willing to suspend ALL of your preconceptions of what success looked like. You had to be willing to invest in the materials you had on hand along with the locals, and think in generations and timescales twenty years long.

Though thinking on it, the same could be said for a lot of small-town America as well couldn’t it?

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I utterly failed to make contact with my wife through the overburdened WiFi or via cellular at the pool. It bugged me that two years before I had been able to pick up my phone and call a close relative in Kazakhstan and get a crystal clear connection. Central Kazakhstan, twelve time zones away! Not to mention it had significant radiation zones due to Soviet era nuclear tests. That summer I had been able to call him in Ireland for the 4th of July, no trouble at all. Now, we were in the same hemisphere and I could barely get a garbled “hello?” on Skype. Something was wrong with that picture. It may have been time to invest in an Iridium sat/cell modem.

Also, Happy Lunar New Year.

2015 02 15 Sunday

It was 0037. Sleep was eluding me, I rolled out of my rack and lifted up the panel my thin mattress sat on. We slept in what was called a coffin style rack. An uncomfortably accurate name. There was about 14” between the surface of the blankets and the rack above you. They opened, like a coffin, to reveal a sectioned box underneath for storing personal items, uniforms and the occasional snack. At 4 inches deep it could hold a surprising amount. There was a bar that flipped up to hold the rack open while you rummaged around inside for whatever it was you might need.

I grabbed my toiletries and headed to the head. I’d let my hair grow out that patrol. It saved money on razors, shaving cream, and time in front of the sink. I missed the ritual of it though. No matter how bad a day was, the act of shaving my head was like a reset button. It was a reference point in my life around which I could stabilize everything else, silly thing to base your day on I know, but it worked. If things continued to get as out of hand as they had been, I might have gone back to doing it.

The stress was probably what woke me up. That and the dreams. They had become considerably more vivid lately. I pondered all of this while I scrubbed down and let the lukewarm water sluice off me in wavering sheets. I didn’t know what was causing the swells to stack the way they were, but the Cutter was rolling like she was pounding into surf. For a moment I braced my feet against the inside of the stall; one hand on the t-handle water valve and one on the long vertical hand rail bolted to the shower bulkhead.

I hung my head and thought.

The water was starting to feel chilly as it pounded me on the neck. I cranked the t-handle ever so slightly to the right; getting the water hot enough to make me sweat would defeat the purpose of scrubbing down.

I took pride in my self-control. Being able to reign in my emotions, especially the useless ones, and focus on the job at hand had become more important as I got older. I thought back on the amount of energy I burned as a younger man letting my emotions drive me… it was amazing I got anything accomplished. I stayed angry for a long time growing up, especially in high school and college.

I felt my face tighten with concentration and forced it to relax. I had to get a handle on things and figure out what was keeping me wound tighter than the main spring in an old clock. After a while I killed the water and dried off. Always one hand on the rail.

At sea, at home, camping, on the road; some rituals never changed. Razor, mouthwash, toothbrush, deodorant, all the motions familiar and near muscle memory now. I needed to trim up that haircut; yet another reason to simply shave it.

I dressed and headed up the bridge for some air and staggered around like a drunk man, always keeping a hand on the wall and one on my coffee mug. I rarely moved about the Cutter without coffee in hand. Every motion was slightly exaggerated due to compensating for the heaving rolling movements of the cutter. Eventually I made it up to the bridge and stood at the rail. It was only then, at the top of the Cutter’s super structure that I noticed just how bad she was heeled over.

We were canted to starboard at about 12 degrees, which at the water line wasn’t much, but at the bridge rail sixty feet off the water it was a considerable angle. We were listing to starboard for two reasons. We were low on fuel so we were riding high like a bathtub toy, and the wind was blowing an easy 25 knots off the port bow. The cutter had a lot of sail area for the wind to strike and without the normal ballasting weight of the diesel it was that much easier to push us over.

I stood up there and let the buffeting wind roar in my ears. The moon was only a sliver in the east. Its shadowed portion just barely visible. The wind pushing waves over the tops of the swells added an extra layer of wrinkle and texture to the water’s surface. It made it appear out of focus and hazy. Dawn was still hours away but the moon, low in the sky, gave the illusion of predawn light.

The swells and waves coming from the same direction, stacking as they hit us on the port bow. The leading knife edge of the hull mitigated a lot of the pounding effect, but every now and then the forward section would clear the water entirely and we’d splash down hard in the trough of a swell. You could feel her flex under the impact. Bracing against the movement I pressed my feet to the deck and a knee to the elbow high wall surrounding the bridge wings.

It was only then that I became truly aware of just how hard we were turning for. The throb of the mains was reaching all the way forward to the superstructure. For a long time, I stood at the rail, braced, lost in the moment. I did my best not to think and just stared off into the dim morning moonlight.

For that moment I was transported back in time almost 10 years to the summer I spent in Key West as a deck hand on the Schooner Western Union. When on bow duty I would sometimes crawl out onto the netting under the bowsprit and jib boom to the literal tip of the boat. Once there I would stand up on the long narrow wooden post sticking out some 30 feet from the bow. Eventually once I had the timing of the waves, I’d wrap a leg around the thumb thick steel cable that ran from the tip of that wooden boom, up some 80 feet to the tip of the foremast. Leaning back against that cable, called the forestay, I would put my hands behind my head, balance there and ride the front most point of the ship up and down on the swells. It felt like I was flying.

Apparently this was a bit of a stunt because I would sometimes turn around to find 20 or so tourists up on the bow snapping pictures of the lunatic out on the very end of the boat with no safety harness, belt, or at the very least line tied around his waist. It never occurred to me that if I fell the Schooner would run me over and feed me to the twin screws 135 feet aft of where I stood. Given the barnacle growth on the hull it would have been a quick, brutal, and excruciating death.

Shaking my head clear of such thoughts I focused on the present again. It was a lovely morning. I still had a few hours till sunrise. I poked my head in the wheelhouse to check the “throttles”. The propellers were set for 8 feet of pitch and turning for 180; in English it meant we were making about 12 knots into a strong head wind and current, so more like 10. I decided to walk around the ship for a bit to clear my head further.

Being out in the sea air seemed to be helping. I spent some time down on the bow contemplating and staring off at the East. Eventually I started to wander again and found myself kicked back and relaxing in one of the flight deck nets. Strictly speaking we weren’t supposed to lay in those. I lost track of time staring up at the moon and stars. The rise and fall motion of the cutter was muted that far aft. I drifted into the moment again, relaxing even further.

I’d only ever accomplished the “Zen” state of being a few times in my life and I envied those that could achieve it at will. It truly was a perfect moment in time where you were able to concentrate on absolutely nothing while the world happened around you. I’d heard hunters talk about something similar right as they went to squeeze the trigger or release an arrow; a moment in time that felt like an eternity. Painters and sketch artists that could lose hours in a day to a piece of work and it only felt like minutes. Laying there in the flight nets I had one of those perfect moments.

A particularly hard impact with a wave jolted me loose from my reverie. My coffee mug, thankfully sealed, tumbled free of my grip and I juggled it for a moment. Trying to catch an unbalanced, half-full, slick steel coffee mug while reclined on your back aboard a rolling ship is harder than it sounds. Eventually it landed perfectly in one of my hands and I tucked it in tight like a football.

Looking around I realized that I could read some of the warning labels on the tail rotor of the helicopter I was laying under. Looking East I could see more light on the horizon than the moon alone could provide. The sun would be up soon. That close to the equator it would be like flicking on a light switch and I had watch soon. Thinking about watch made me realize the mug only felt half full.

Ponderously I climbed out of the net and made my way down to the mess deck for more coffee. I would need it as I didn’t sleep through the night. Still, even though I woke stressed out and worried, that time alone in the dark had done some good.

With any luck it would be a quiet Sunday.

End of Brief

This debrief takes place off the coast of Panama on Thursday February twelfth, twenty fifteen.

2015 02 12 Thursday

I was standing on the port bridge wing in the relatively cool morning air. I say morning. It was 0236 and the moon was about two fists off the horizon.

A quick trick for determining the altitude of an aircraft at sea was to hold your fist out at arm’s length. Turn it so your thumb is on top and laid flat against the knuckle of your index finger. Now, sight along your arm keeping the bottom of your fist on the horizon. The width of your fist is roughly ten degrees. It was just quicker to call it one, two or three fists high. Not an accurate measure for determining altitude or range, but it was an effective quick reference tool for spotting airborne targets and relaying their position to other watch standers.

Under that dense scattered cloud cover the half-moon was a sullen yellow patch in the sky. As the clouds broke it became a baleful half-lidded eye watching us slide along in the night. The reflection on the water was indistinct and narrow compared to the near daylight brightness of a full moon on a clear night. Everyone on watch up there was moving slowly, fatigue dragging at their limbs.

The air temp was hovering in the low eighties. If I stood still the wind from our 12-knot passage was just enough to keep us cool. Even a slight breeze was a blessing at that latitude (8th parallel). For once I was up there on watch, which was a nice change of pace considering I was usually in the windowless sweat box of CIC. The engineers had yet to isolate the issues with our HVAC systems.

One might have wondered what I could possibly see on a night with less than 40% illumination. Well, unaided not much to be honest. So to facilitate the watching I had a third generation night vision monocular pressed to my right eye. The movies made night vision and FLIR look as good as daylight. In reality… get some cloudy pond water, dye it green, now conduct all your daily tasks while looking through that water. Voila, mil-spec third gen night vision. That being said, with training and practice you could learn to sight down a weapon and hit what you were aiming at. You could also find people and debris in the water or sit back and observe just about anything undetected. Which was what we were currently doing.

I kept my left eye open and adjusted the focus of the monocular to match my normal field of vision. After a while my brain started to interpret the dissimilar visual inputs into a single picture. It was akin to having surgery on one eye then having to wear sunglasses with different tint gradients on each lens. It also gave you a raging headache if you didn’t take a break every thirty minutes or so.

Standing up there I was struck by the moment. While I was certainly not the first Coastie to stand on the bridge wing of a 210 near the equator staring into the dark wondering just what in the hell he was supposed to be looking for, it was the first time that I had ever done it.

It was nothing like the heavily clouded night off the coast of California where we played hide and seek with the full moon. The swells were low and far apart. The darkness in the west was considerably more solid. The hull breaking through the low waves sounded like the beaches on the east coast near low tide; quiet, and steady. It was damn near hypnotizing. Which was probably why everyone was moving so torpidly.

Someone touched my left elbow. I startled so hard I nearly tossed the monocular over the side. I fumbled the $9500 piece of equipment for a second before getting a solid grip. Thank God for neck lanyards. I had become so absorbed in my task I didn’t notice the soft footfalls of boots on the deck approaching. I say soft because the ensign wearing them was a 140lb female; she would have had to stomp to be heard. I made a terse remark about junior officers needing bells around their necks, and could just make out her grin in the dark. She wanted to know if we’d seen anything. There were a few boobies (the bird, get your mind out of the gutter) flying around but that was about it. She was also a black belt in one or two disciplines, so I refrained from making the obvious joke and she moved on to the next watch stander.

Hours later.

After several changes in course, an intelligence update, and multiple shifts standing at the rail we got the word that someone on the FLIR console had spotted an object. We confirmed the target visually and I was sent below to conduct wake ups for the boat teams. Eventually about 80% of the Cutter was awake and on task getting ready to pick up whatever this thing in the water was.

Explaining to a groggy boat crewman that they were being woken up because we saw a string of packages in the water could be a difficult task. There was a lot of repeating of words, strange questions that only the half-awake could conjure, and strained whispering. The explanation wound up boiling down to “Captain said get the small boat in the water”. Throw around the word “Captain” on a cutter and it usually got people moving pretty quick. I stumbled back up to CIC to start in on the stack of forms I knew would be required for our tactical controller stateside.

I know that I mentioned the paperwork a lot in the last few debriefs. I know that every job on the planet involves papers and that we were certainly no exception. Apparently working with foreign governments involves a lot of phone calls at very high levels. In order to keep these cases as legally airtight as possible those phone calls had to be backed up by the proper forms and minutia. A lot of them.

It made for a lot of repetitive typing and updating of forms as new information was acquired. If we were lucky these forms could be updated as the law enforcement case progressed with only a few tweaks to details before they were submitted. If not, then there was a lot of pouring through mission logs looking for said details to confirm everything. International law was sticky enough that everything had to be legally airtight otherwise a case could be tossed on something as simple as a misspelling or a transposed number.

The small boat launched then recovered a few free-floating bales tied together with a string. There was no transmitter with them so it was probably a load jettisoned by a panga running from another Coast Guard asset. Technically it was a win because we’d kept the contraband out of the hands of the bad guys and off the streets, but we’d rather have had the smugglers.

Intelligence is always more valuable than illicit product.

Only partially satisfied we documented, logged, and stowed the goods. Then, turned our bow back into the wind to continue the hunt.

I stood at the rail again, staring off into the dark, searching.

End of brief

The last few days had run together into a blur of blue overhead lights, garbled voices over radios, adrenaline, legal documents, briefings, intel reports, and copious amounts of coffee. Trying to pick out the details was like trying to see a single leaf on a tree from the window of a speeding car.

I know I spent time on a rowing machine because the calluses on my hands had fresh layers on them. Also, my thighs and shoulders ached. I think I’d eaten a meal or two. I know that I was bathing because I still smelled like soap when I woke up.

Of all the smells on this cutter the two that stand out the most are fire and soap. The first is something everyone recognizes on an instinctual level; fire bad! The other is considerably more subtle. I think I’d started to associate it with the end of the day and sleep.

The last few blocks of tasking that’d come across the wire had us chasing all over hell’s half acre. An aircraft would spot something and I swore I could almost hear the bugle call they sound right before the horses clear the gates at the Kentucky derby; “AND THEY’RE OFF!” CIC would spin up and most of the command cadre crammed into the room with all the OS’s. Four or five radios started chattering over one another.

Sometimes I’d have a red phone handset draped over each shoulder and a VHF mike in one hand while I toke notes with the other. I was actually getting better at writing with my left hand.

During the previous case I was on the Shipboard Command and Control System, or SCCS, console plotting targets on the big screen. I’d call out bearing and range vectors while getting pelted with position updates. At some point in this dance the Captain ordered the small boats be readied and two of us went outside to check their radios.

This process started day, night, early, late, sometimes we’d break off a case and change course to start on a new one. Which meant ALL of the paperwork started over.

I was not complaining, far from it in fact. This was just part of it, and the reason we were out there. After three solid days of running back and forth across the ocean with no solid hits…. the adrenaline spikes, the long hours, and nothing to show for our efforts; the whole song and dance started to wear on people. Nerves were starting to fray.

One of the chores on any sailing vessel is checking the condition of all the lines, or ropes for you landlubbers. A seasoned mariner learns to recognize the signs of a line near its failure point. Loose whipping at the end, a core showing through its sheath, individual strands poking out from the main braids, and a plethora of other indicators become familiar over time. Some of the crew, were starting to show the first signs, myself included.

For example, I have a southern accent that gets thicker when I get distracted and let my control slip. If get tired and angry enough, it’s a full drawl. We were having issues with one of our satellite coms Monday night as I was trying to pass our position to some poor woman literally six thousand miles away. We kept losing the mil-sat-com connection and she was only getting about half the transmission. Thirty minutes of this ended with me sounding like John Wayne on the edge of killing someone while I tersely asked a nearby asset to act as a relay. I swear I heard suppressed laughter in his voice.

It was 2114 there. I needed to shower, shave, and hit the rack. I suspected that we’re going to get a rude awakening there in the next little bit.

Good night to all.

The writing became a direct letter to the dozen or so people I knew that were reading it. It doesn’t quite convert cleanly from present to past tense so I apologize if some of the sentences are, awkward.

This debrief takes place somewhere near the equator in the eastern Pacific on Sunday February eighth twenty fifteen.

2015 02 08 Sunday

In some ways I felt like I had let you all down as my readers. That trip down south had been considerably less exciting than I had been anticipating. I had been struggling to find the interesting, the unique, and the weird to write home about. And to that date, I had only found the mundane.

I did my best not to delve into narcissistic ramblings. There were a few crew members on board who loved to discuss themselves. Sometimes I could almost swear their next words were going to be “Now I’ve talked about myself enough, let’s hear what you think about me”. I did my best not to be that person.

I would have written more about the specific personality traits of crew members and their interactions, but I felt that would be violating their privacy in many ways. I also thought that these missives would quickly devolve into a PG rated version of a harlequin romance novel were I to get into the nitty gritty of daily shipboard drama.

I would say the Captain was a very standoffish sort of man. He was friendly enough but reserved. Learning to read him was like trying to read the surface of a deep river. You knew there was dangerous debris along the bottom that could throw up some fairly serious undercurrents, but unless the surface was churning you never knew you’d screwed up until it was too late.

Anyone who’s ever operated an outboard motor in a swamp has sheared the propeller’s retaining pin on a post or stump at least once. There’s a loud clunk, the motor jumps and you just kept puttering along. You were still going, so all was well, right? Then, a little while later, you reverse the propeller and it just zooms right off the end of the drive shaft, out into the river. Talking with the Captain was sort of like that. All that being said, it was obvious that he cared about his crew. He made sure we were taken care of first.

The XO, executive officer, was a quiet one as well. I didn’t think that man had ever made a misstep in his life. I thought if he ever screwed up he would do it so well that you wouldn’t be able to tell that anything had actually gone wrong. Suave, smooth, calm… James Bond in real life. He exuded the commanding presence of a physically larger person even though he was a relatively compact man, maybe 5’6”, lean build. I didn’t think a thing happened on that ship without him knowing about it. It was a little scary to be honest. I trusted him though; he knew what he was doing.

I wrote about Doc earlier. I would be sad to see him go that summer. He was an amazingly perceptive and disarming individual. I sincerely hoped I would run into him again later on down the road. He was the sort of person everybody needed to have in their corner at least once in life, if for no other reason than to give the example of what a genuinely decent human being should be. I didn’t think he would hesitate to lay down his life for anyone that truly needed it. I had also mentioned that I was a Christian; remarkably bad at it, but a Christian nonetheless. I believed that there were people on this Earth that took after God’s heart like you or I drew breath. Doc was one of those people.

There were others that had heavily influenced me since my arrival. People that truly put their shipmates and crew first were a lot more common than I first thought.

The fellow that slept in the rack above me went around the berthing area and added Velcro to the pull out drawers under everyone’s bunk so they didn’t slide out and back when the ship rolled. Next time you’re near a filing cabinet open one of the drawers hard enough that it slams when it gets all the way out. Then, slam it closed. Now do that every 15 seconds or so. Now imagine about 30 of those drawers opening and slamming at random intervals throughout the night. After he went through and added the Velcro, it all stopped.

Another guy who shared the six-man berthing cubicle with me had an infectious enthusiasm for the job and I was slightly jealous of it. A lot of interesting and colorful terms had been used to describe me; enthusiastic was not one of them. Oh, I got excited all right, but I didn’t usually show it unless I was in the company of people I trusted enough to let my guard down a little. My enthusiastic shipmate though; he always had something to smile about. Every day he saw me it was always “Aud! How ya doing man? Lunch was awesome right? Can’t wait to get back home and…” I couldn’t help but grin and talk for a moment. He would make Warrant Boatswains Mate fairly quickly I thought.

Warrant was an “enlisted” officer, highly specialized in one particular field and master of it. Whatever cutter or station he was assigned after that would most likely be one of the best in the service, period. Enthusiasm was a trait of good leadership. I needed to figure out how to develop that trait.

One of the things they told us in Petty Officer Indoctrination training was that we had taken the first steps towards being leaders within the Coast Guard. What they didn’t tell us was how to go about being those leaders. We got the standard lectures on leading by example, making wise decisions, and being good communicators. We were not taught how to deal with personality conflicts, how to make yourself approachable, or how to identify and predict problems in shipmates early on. Maybe those were things that couldn’t be taught but had to be learned firsthand.

The longer I lived the more I realized just how much I had yet to learn. If I could have gone back in time and beaten myself senseless for being an arrogant ass and a moron to boot, I would have done so. Repeatedly.

The other thing they didn’t tell you was how to be a mentor. I was seven or eight years older than our four new ensigns. I had enlisted about the same time they showed up at the academy. It had been an interesting balancing act between showing them how to be a good Coastie and what the enlisted personnel needed and expected of them; all this while being their subordinate.

Sometimes the lessons were just about how to manage oneself as a professional. All they knew of the service before arriving on the cutter was the controlled college life at the Coast Guard Academy. I certainly had no intentions of falling into that role, and maybe it was presumptuous for me to think of myself as such. But it was certainly how I felt some days when they came to me for advice or to vent. I was not used to being the older brother.

The previous deployment had been a lesson in stress management and learning about my Cutter. This one had been a lesson in managing other people’s stress and learning how to keep the work environment productive despite their breakdowns, combative personalities, and swollen egos. If you ever wanted to make a career out of people watching, join the military, you’d have plenty to see.

I’d kept my guard up since we broke lines in Port Angeles and got underway about a month before. It had made dealing with the more difficult crew members easier. I wished I had a better analogy than “keeping my walls or guard up” but it was the only one that seemed to fit at 0715 in the morning. It was difficult to antagonize someone who didn’t really take the time to acknowledge the petty bullshit in life. Keeping a little more closed off from the drama and the people that caused it had allowed me to focus on my work. Apparently I was doing something right; I’d gotten a few Bravo Zulus. BZ was Navy/Coast Guard speak for good job or well done from higher up the chain.

I’d ranted enough.

I apologized for the lack of vivid imagery or descriptions of a heaving ship in stormy waters. That close to the equator bad weather amounted to a cloudy day, at least in winter anyway. Growing up I always associated the ocean with the sulfur smell of the marshes. Out there it was the smell of diesel exhaust, hot steel, and salt.

We were conducting “drift ops”, which was equivalent to a form of fishing called snagging. Throw a hook out into rushing water and see what you snag, be it the branch from a tree, a large fish, or a severed foot. Only in our case the rushing water was the East Central Pacific and it was roaring along at about 0.7 knots. I thought the universe was lulling us into a sense of overconfidence and security. Something was about to happen and when it did it was going to be brutal.

Until then, I would continue to search for the weird, the unusual, and the beautiful. I’d let you know what I found.

Honestly, I can’t even remember the details on this one. We were somewhere off the west Coast of the Mexico Guatemalan border, I think. I was so tired all I can recall is the one moment on the bow. I likely wrote the debrief the following day on Wednesday, February fourth, twenty fifteen.

2015 02 04 Wednesday

Fatigue, like pain, has a way of reorganizing your priorities. If only a little weary, I might just sit for a while, drink a glass of tea, and read a magazine. If I was truly exhausted I might not even bother to shave much less undress before going to bed. You only had to shave your face once with tooth paste to learn when you were too tired to scrape a sharp piece of steel over your face.

I was spent.

I was on the port side of the foc’sul (the deck space at the bow of the cutter) sitting on the low edge of the hull that stuck up around that area as a sort of splash guard. There was a cable railing at waist height but it was uncomfortable to lean against. So there I was, hunched forward, elbows on my knees, chin in my left hand and coffee cup in my right. My clothes were mostly soaked through with sweat. It was a dank heat, like July evenings in South Georgia after two weeks without rain. The moon was full and about two hours off the horizon. It rose quickly at those latitudes.

I flexed my jaw to stifle a yawn and 30 hours of stubble dug into my palm. I came out there to get a break from the fervor that was CIC; paperwork, phone calls, secret level messages on the computers, and officers popping in and out to ask mission specific questions.

We’d been going solid since about 0715 the previous morning. It was closing in on 0200. At one point, when we launched the helicopter, I racked out for an hour in the cool of my berthing area to escape the press of bodies and claustrophobic heat of CIC.

What we thought was going to be high speed chase across a hundred miles of ocean turned into a SAR, Search and Rescue, case. We spent eight hours plotting courses, checking vectors, lining up equipment, and contacting every point of authority in that corner of the world only to intercept a disabled fishing boat that had been drifting for days.

That wasn’t to say I was unhappy about saving three lives but I would have rather gone at this from a SAR angle from the beginning. Low intensity SAR was considerably less stressful than high intensity LE, law enforcement. This was going to continue well into the morning I thought.

My only company out there was a bird. It had a hook at the end of its beak, so I thought it was a cormorant. As bright as the moon was the animal was only a hard silhouette on the bow peak. It was maybe ten feet away. Land was a long flight from there so I left it alone and we sat in relative silence of the night. The cutter was idling while a tow line was rigged to the disabled fishing boat behind us. That far forward the diesels were only a quiet thrum. The cormorant ruffled its feathers loudly and the noise was enough to make me jump. I downed the last of my coffee and got up. If I sat there long enough I was going to fall asleep.

Looking around it was easy to see how so much could go missing out there on the ocean. It was no wonder we had such a difficult time finding the bad guys and rescuing the lost. The flying bridge was sixty or so feet from the water. At that height of eye, the horizon was about 12 miles away on a calm day. We had gone a week or more without seeing any other surface contacts. A couple hundred miles from shore may as well have been a thousand. Out there in the moon lit dark the ocean was as black as fresh coffee. Judging by the haze in the air I’d say the water temp wasn’t far from eighty Fahrenheit.

Well, break time was over. I still had to put together all of the relevant paper work into a “case package” for the bureaucrats and lawyers to go over to make sure the taxpayer’s money had been well spent.

Speaking of taxes… I needed to do those too. Paying taxes and being a government paid employee always struck me as circular logic. Oh well, I had never felt the government or the military was over burdened with logic of any sort.

I was out of coffee. I really wished they would brew that stuff cold sometimes so I didn’t have to water it down with ice. Normally I could drink hot coffee on hot days but I’d already sweated through my uniform.

I stood up and the cormorant shifted loudly again and tucked its beak under its wing to sleep. I should have followed its example and done the same.

2015 01 30 Friday

La Crucecita Mexico is the tourist town and port that provides much of the income for Huatulco to the North West. Staring at it from the bow it doesn’t look like much. Scrub brush and cacti densely populate the hill sides around the narrow bay where the cutter was moored. I say hillsides but they’re steep enough to be called cliffs in places. It puts me in mind of the Western edge of the Central Texas hill country, only with much larger cacti.

There are palm frond thatch roofs covering all the beach front cabanas. Off the starboard side there was the marina and on the ridge overlooking it are the empty gray hulks of what was supposed to be grand hotels and condos. Some have been painted and converted to apartments. Looking around the cutter, I thought the place belonged in a spy movie. Up to that point my entire experience with Mexico has been one of seedy border towns, illegal crossing points in south Texas, and six years of law enforcement intelligence data.

The port was shockingly different.

For starters, it was clean. The air didn’t smell of broken down sewer systems or burning trash. The medians were well trimmed and covered in coconut trees and thick grass. The cars were in no worse shape than that of a moderately prosperous town anywhere along the Gulf coast of North America. The cab drivers never asked if I needed a prostitute, marijuana, or cocaine. They smiled, spoke broken but friendly English, and were very gracious.

Nearly every restaurant there was a hole in the wall; which is to say delicious. They were all as clean as an open-air venue could be. The place was simmering with potential and building momentum. I could almost feel it in the air when I talked to the locals and was a true eye opener.

I started out my adventure alone in the OPCEN. For irrelevant and illogical reasons we had to stand watch in there while in certain foreign ports. For six hours at a time I alternated between reading Jack Kerouac’s The Road Novels, checking our secure computer for updates, and doing pushups to stay awake. There were two of us in the watch section at the time so its six hours on six off. Soon dawn rolled around and I was relieved of my watch at about 1130.

After much rummaging around in the berthing area I manage to gather together all of my stuff into a huge mesh duffel and set off with my dive partner. In addition to the thirty odd pounds of various and sundry bits of dive gear on my back, I was wearing 24lbs of lead ingots. I smelled of neoprene, bullets, and sun block. My dive partner was the only other registered diver aboard the cutter. Neither of us had the cash on hand to pay for a cab, and all the liberty vans were gone. The hotel was only a mile away, we were both endurance athletes, we knew we do it.

She stood at a five foot five, maybe weighed a hundred twenty, and her pack was nearly as large as mine. Hell, I think it was big enough for her to sleep in. I suddenly felt out of shape.

About thirty minutes later we arrived at the hotel where half the crew had booked their stay for the port call. Her ancestors hailed from a cold place somewhere in the North Sea; therefore she tanned then burned within the first ten minutes. I felt my body remembering what Texas Summers were like, then I remembered that it was January. This incongruity coupled with dehydration gave me a headache. Along the way we discovered that all of the dive shops in the area are booked solid for the weekend. Apparently it was peak season.

She went to find her room and fellow officers while I wandered up and down steps looking for the guy splitting the room with me. Soon I located the appropriately numbered door on the shady back side of the hotel. I knocked and was welcomed into air-conditioned Nirvana with a firm bed, white tile floors, a balcony, and a clean shower with enough water pressure to peel the deck off an aircraft carrier; all for $28.92 a night.

The hotel was white walled and roofed in those stereotypical orange terracotta tiles seen in all the hot places around the world. The courtyard was massive and almost entirely taken up by a long meandering swimming pool with islands and hot tubs. We had a few minutes before the next shuttle left for the little beach club down the road, so my roommate and I took the time to cool off and pound some water. Somewhere along the line we dozed off in the cold and missed the bus. One of us had the foresight to set an alarm though and we woke ready to have an experience. We set off in the afternoon heat looking for that which sailors crave. Cold. Beer.

The club was a walled compound with a thatched roof pavilion on one side and a tiled pool on the other. It was situated on a narrow cove maybe fifteen hundred yards across and three thousand from the sand to open waters. The breaking surf was the color blue you only see on National Geographic covers.

Did I mention I was getting all of this for $28.92?

I plopped down on an overstuffed ottoman and a bucket of Corona’s materialized on the other end table next to me. A cerveza or two later I received a menu. Spying the word chorizo, which a type of Mexican sausage, I ordered in the blind. My friend, looking for advice on food, turned to me and asked

“So what did you order?” I shrugged and responded, “Hell if I know.”

In truth, I had no idea. Moments later, mid argument on the merits of the new Coast Guard retirement system, a steaming pizza-like food item appeared at my left elbow, literally. I don’t think I ever actually saw our waiter after I ordered. The crust was somewhere between a thick oven baked flour tortilla and actual thin crust pizza. The toppings consisted of ground chorizo, onions, thin slices of avocado, dark red tomato quarters, cilantro, and loads of shredded Mexican cheese. Paired with a corona and squirted with lime juice… it was a meal I had dreams about.

Full of food and beer we hit water. It hit back, like a truck.

For some reason the beach was steep there; very steep. It’s terraced like the anti erosion techniques used by farmers on hilly terrain. That meant that a wave can break multiple times before it reaches the water line on the sand. It also meant that the waves stack high hard and quick. I waded out on my first attempt to body surf in ten years. I timed the wave and quickly realized that I’d made a terrible mistake.

Balancing on the edge of one of those terraces with only the balls of my feet touching I was at the mercy of the sea. The incoming wave snatched my feet out from under me and doubled me up so that my ankles were at my ears. In one swift motion it plowed me into the level portion of the terrace and rolled me up the beach like every over exaggerated cartoon you’ve ever seen. Whoever drew those cartoons, spent time on a beach like that one.

Before I could extract myself from the coarse sand piled up around me the next roller lifted me up and threw me an additional six feet further. After the foam and salt water drained from my sinuses I extracted my head from behind my knees. Looking over at Doc I watched him pull his head out of the sand like an ostrich. The wave half buried him and he was in the plank position doing his best not to drown in two inches of water. He came up cussing and burbling around mouthfuls of water; a string of Northern Alabama profanity that defies description.

After a few more attempts we swam out to just past the breaker line and bobbed up and down on the swells. Sand is abrasive to begin with but on that particular beach it missed being pea gravel by millimeters. The sun dipped below the horizon signaling an end to the swim and a beginning to the evening’s festivities. With skin burnt and thoroughly abraded we rinsed off in the pool and headed back to the hotel. There was a party to attend.

When a Coast Guard officer gets promoted they throw a party called a “wetting down”. The short version is they invite the crew out to a party and put down half a month’s paycheck for an initial bar tab. This is the traditional way for them to say thank you to the enlisted personnel who have helped them attain rank. We recently had two ensigns make lieutenant junior grade so the bar tab was paid for upfront for the better part of the night.

The venue was the La Crema lounge. I think if it were in South East Asia it would have been an open-air opium den. Looking around it might very well have started life that way. The ceiling was high and covered by flags, paisley pattern tablecloths, day of the dead wall hangings and just about every kind of decorative cloth you could think of. They were tacked up at all four corners so they bowed downwards to help absorb sound and dangle low enough that the ceiling fans had worn holes in them in some places.

The seating was eclectic at best. Giant high-heeled shoes chairs from the 80’s shared tables with bean bag chairs in some sort of frame to keep them in place. There were no two stools of the same style or height. Chase lounges, lawn chairs, barrel seats… it was the bar furniture graveyard. The whole place smelled like high end tobacco, beer, wood smoke and Pizza.

There was a wood fired stone oven over in one corner turning out the most flavorful pizzas I have ever tasted. Alcohol was being passed around with fervor. I never had the same beer twice. Margaritas got plunked down on tables eight at time like they were appetizers. And despite all of this it was calm and collected as can be expected. Those that couldn’t hold their liquor chose to be elsewhere tonight. Those that could were taking it easy to make the prepaid tab last longer.

I get pensive when I drink and that night was no different. The splitting headache brought on by caffeine withdrawal didn’t help. The crowd thinned and so did the smoke. I switched to water and started playing shepherd. Soon the tab was closed and it is time to get back to the hotel. We made a brief stop at a club to keep the night going a little longer. After some drunken confusion about another bar tab I walked a shipmate back to the hotel and picked up a fresh coconut along the way. It fell right in front of us and seemed a waste not to take it.

The party wound up following us to the hotel pool and I spent a solid two hours peeling said coconut’s outer husk away with a dive tool. Not an easy or quick task. Once peeled I handed it off and never saw it again.

The next morning I woke to an open balcony and an eastern pacific sunrise; chilly and pristine. Blissfully I rolled over to sleep three more hours. Around 0900 I ventured out into the sun, find some coffee and my dive partner. Still feeling the lingering effects of the booze and a little put out by the dive shops being booked up we settled for snorkeling. We headed into town with a half dozen others from the cutter.

A quick stop for tacos at a street side restaurant on the main plaza leaded to more gastric bliss. They served the taco equivalent of sliders; small flour tortillas with meet and onions. Much like a Korean barbeque all the fixings come out in a half dozen little wooden bowls. This square was always a hub of activity, street vendors, cabs, tourist shops, hawkers calling to one another and everyone and anyone about their wares, everyone whistling waving and smiling. My back was always to a wall and I was constantly scanning for threats. I checked tattoos against what I can remember from my work in Texas. I looked for anything that stood out as a warning flag.

I found none.

By all observations it was a middle class Mexican town, no worse off than half the small towns I’ve rolled through while driving back and forth across the US. It took a little while but eventually I relaxed enough to enjoy myself.

By 1300 we were two coves over from the cutter and fumbling in the surf with putting on our fins. I was very much out of practice. But, soon I was face down over an unhealthy reef watching all manner of critters go about their business. If you ever want to know about ocean reefs up close and personal snorkel with a marine biology major. I learned more about sea life in those hours that I ever did in my formal education. Hours later with the sun is noticeably lower, time came to head back to the boat and get some chow. The pacific is a cold body of water to float in for too long, even in the tropics. Back aboard the Cutter I went through the process of washing my gear while I showered then laid it out to dry in the afternoon air.

You take care of your gear or it won’t take care of you.

I pulled on my comfy jeans a plain white T-shirt and headed into the night with friends to get dinner. We stopped at the square again to have ten or more of those tiny tacos each at another patio eatery. A tin roof, Christmas lights wrapped around posts, florescent bulbs in palm frond shades, slow moving ceiling fans, and one of those vertical rotisserie things you see in Greek restaurants were pretty much the extent of this place. It looked like it used to be a garage. The beer was cheap and the meat (goat I think) tasted delicious. We settled the bill up with a great deal of broken English and even more broken Spanish. Six hundred seventy-five pesos and nine dollars later we figured out it’s a forty percent tip and shrugged it off as the cost of doing business.

They were really good tacos.

In my memories, it was a fair price. Tired, full, and ready for a bed I made my way back to the cutter with my shipmates. I had a uniform to prep and three days beard to shave off.

My sincerest apologies for not getting today’s Debrief out on time. I set it for 0600 tomorrow instead of today by accident. I can only blame the fact that I have a newborn to keep alive in addition to myself and my three year old son. My sleep schedule is about as bad as it was aboard the cutter during counter drug ops.

Anyway, the goal is to build up a buffer for my paid subscribers, while giving myself a grace period for busy weeks. At the moment I am recording, editing, and rerecording between 2200 and 0200 the next day.

Sincerely yours

-K.C.

Thank you for your support this far. I would not be able to do this without you. I am reaching out to talk with Coasties and vets from avenues of the Coast Guard I am not as familiar with to maybe bring them in for interviews. I need to figure out how to record and edit conversations, but as soon as I do that I’ll get one lined up.

If y’all have anyone in mind, let me know and I’ll reach out to them.

Well, if you’ve stuck with me this long then you’ve made it through the 10 debriefs from 2014 and have listened to the first one of 2015.

There are another 32 debriefs to go in 2015, 31 in 2016, and 20 in 2017, plus a kicker from January 2018 after I got out. That’s an additional 84 rambling journal entries from a sleepless Coast Guard petty officer with too much time on his hands.

I have a hand shake deal with the owner of The Second Mission Foundation to get the entries published as a book, but I am line behind a few other manuscripts at the moment; no idea where I am in line at this point.

My goal is to continue publishing one debrief reading a week, every Monday at 6:00 am. If I am going to miss one, I will let you know ahead of time. Also, I have turned on paid subscriptions. The True Believers are a one time purchase of $80 and I’m only giving out 100 of those. They get unfettered access to my email, early access to anything I publish on the Aud At Sea Debrief, and its permanent. Paid subscribers can get yearly access at $50 or monthly at $5.

As always, if you have suggestions, questions about anything I didn’t cover in the footnotes, or just questions in general please do not hesitate to send me a message. I do plan on doing a Q and A episode when I get enough questions in.

Looking forward to having you all follow me through this journey.

-K.C.

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