Hello everyone,
 
It's day 148 of my 161 day deployment and we're officially on the homestretch. This afternoon we left Hong Kong, China. Hong Kong is fun. I highly recommend it. When we pulled in, we moored to a buoy in the middle of Victoria Harbour. Navy ships generally don't generally moor to buoys, so it was an interesting evolution. Immediately after we got everything settled, we had a change of command ceremony. The new Captain is very different. He's about my height, and is very personable. After the ceremony, the American Club held a reception for the wardroom. The American Club has a view overlooking the harbor from one of Hong Kong's many skyscrapers. After the reception, we all met at a bar and celebrated the change of command in the traditional sailor style. I had to leave the bar early, around 4 am, because I had duty the next day.
 
When I got back to the ship, I was told by my boss to make preparations to leave within the next 6 hours because of a typhoon. This is not what a drunk officer wants to hear as they take over the operations department. Luckily, a few hours later, some Admiral changed his mind, and we stayed. The typhoon is still affecting our operations, but we got to stay for our entire port visit. After a full day on the ship, I was ready to go out again. Another ship pulled in just after us with one of my classmates from the academy on it. So he and an '04 grad from his ship and some of the guys from my ship and I all went over to Kowloon together to do some shopping. We went to Sam's Tailor shop, which is moderately famous around the world. The wardroom of my ship spent alot of money at Sam's, so they were very good to us. We all had suits made. They're awesome. When we get back to Pearl Harbor, we plan on having regular "Dress up nights" so that we can all have an excuse to wear our suits. Shopping was followed by returning to the bar district. We went to a couple of bars, sang alot, drank alot, and had a ridiculous amount of fun. Yesterday was recovery day. It was much needed.
 
Before we went to Hong Kong, we spent a few days in Batam, Indonesia. Don't worry, it's well-guarded from the Indian Ocean and was not affected by the tsunami. Batam is definitely third world. The island is well known for cheap knock-off goods and a thriving sex industry. It wasn't as bad as we expected it to be. We ate interesting food, met interesting people, and bought boot-legged DVD's for $1.50 each.
 
So now we're on our way home. Our deployment was generally successful. We executed our mission as ordered, did a few really good things, and showed the flag in obscure ports. I don't know if the world can handle Reuben James sailors for much longer, so it's a good thing we're going home. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of you.
 
JoEllen

Happy July!
 
For all of you counting along at home, you'll be glad to know that we finally ended our attempt at the Navy's record for longest underway period at 76 days. There's one guy on board who's been underway longer than that before, and that was because 9/11 happened while he was on deployment and got extended. The Navy just doesn't keep ships underway that long anymore. We were very special. Now that we're all done, I can tell you that we spent all that time conducting anti-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean. Yep, pirates. Aarrrrgh! For some reason, I don't find pirates very entertaining anymore.
 
So, a few days ago we pulled into a little island nation called Mauritius. It's about 500 miles east of Madagascar. They grow lots of sugar there and have a booming tourist industry. Overall, it's alot like Hawaii, except the national per capita income is $5,000 US. There's a very eclectic mix of Africans and Indians and Europeans and a sprinkling of others.
Highlights of the visit included shopping, a spa visit and dinner at a 5 star resort, a day on the beach and at the outdoor bar of a four star resort, a bar crawl, an boat hi-jacking attempt, a world cup party, a VIP Independence Day reception, a little bit of dancing, and an incredible amount of alcohol. No one got too hurt or in too much trouble, so we're all pretty satisfied. We're collectively glad we're leaving though. Another few days and most of us would have been sent to alcohol and financial counseling; and rightfully so.
 
I hope you all had a happy Independence Day and/or Canada Day. I can't wait to go home and do my drinking on American dollars.
 
Love,
 
JoEllen

Yep, that's right. 105 days since I left Pearl Harbor, 57 of which have been continuously at sea. 57 days at sea means 1,368 hours straight at work. You can get alot done in 1,368 hours. I earned my Officer of the Deck (OOD) qualification. That means that for about 5 hours every day the Captain puts me in charge of everything that's happening on board. You don't really realize how many things are going on at once around here until you're responsible for making sure that every single activity goes off without a hitch.
 
I'm not dumb enough to write anything bad about my bosses in a work e-mail, but let's just say that people get fired around here alot. It's always temporary. It can last for a few minutes, a few days, or a few years. So, don't panic when I tell you that about five days after I earned my OOD Qualification, I was fired. Apparently the Captain doesn't like waking up to see a radar picture that shows us head on with another ship. You learn something every day. It was kind of funny after the initial situation, and I still hold that I did nothing wrong and no one was ever in any danger. I guess the Captain and I have just agreed to disagree on that topic, but I call him all the time now. It definitely annoys him, but it'll be harder to get fired for calling him too much than not calling him at all. Anyways, two days later the Captain called me into his stateroom and "un-fired" me.
 
A couple of hours after I was un-fired, the Captain called me into his stateroom again to give me my annual fitness report. I was "broken out", which means that I did quite well, or the Captain likes me. In reality, it's a healthy mix of the two. What matters is that I'm starting my career off very well. Hopefully I don't get too lazy in the coming months, and the new Captain likes me just as much as this one.
 
Somewhere in between being fired and forgiven, we had beer day. You may think that US Navy ships are alcohol free. You'd be mostly right, but back in the day someone really smart decided that if we sailors are going to spend thousands of hours underway at a time, that we deserve a couple of brewskies once in a while. So, after 45 days underway, if you're not going to enter a port within the next 10 days, each sailor is allowed to have 2 beers, at the Captain's discretion. Our beer day was put off several times, until about day 50. It was a wonderful day. I'm not all that into beer, but that was some good beer. Hopefully, we'll pull into port soon enough that we won't have another one.
 
We're all thinking about the trip home, now. Nobody knows when exactly we're leaving, or where exactly we're going to stop on the way home, but we all know that it's got to happen soon. Alot of good things happen on the way home. We'll get to see land again, which is always fun. We'll also start sending people home and getting new people out here. In fact, we sent one officer off the ship today. We're all looking forward to Ops (my boss) leaving in about three weeks, and the Captain leaving at some point. There will be joy and celebration. It will be like Christmas, and New Years Eve, and everybody's birthday all wrapped into one. At least, that's how we foresee it. Even if we're disappointed by that, we'll be home soon after, so I'm sure we'll be okay.
 
I hope you're all doing well back home, and I'm really excited to get back and see you all.
 
Love,
 
JoEllen

Aloha,
 
I hope you’ve all been doing well. Last time I wrote you, we were dodging hurricanes off the East coast of Australia. Those hurricanes were pretty mean to us. One turned towards us twice as we tried to go around it, and we almost got by without it hitting us – almost… Instead, we had one really rough night. I was on watch, as luck would have it. We had to keep sending guys down to the bottom of the ship to check and make sure our sonar dome didn’t burst as it crashed down on the water from the huge waves. The bow of our ship went completely under the waves several times. In the morning, we found that the bulwark frames on the fo’csle (the I-beams that hold up the sides of the front of the ship) were all torn in two, the watertight doors on the windbreak of the ship had been twisted out of shape, and large sections of tiling on both sides of the ship had torn off. Believe it or not, these were pretty minor worries for us. We were well into our emergency fuel supply (using helicopter fuel for the ship’s engines) and instead of going quite a ways North and West, we had traveled a day East and a little bit North. The problem was that the nearest US support ship was on the other side of the Torres straits, which separate Australia. They take about 8 hours to transit through, and they’re pretty dangerous, so the Navy was not very willing to have the oiler transit the straits and screw up a lot of other logistics for us. It all turned out alright in the end. We made it through the straits with almost a day of fuel left over, and got fuel that evening. So 8 hours of restricted maneuvering (when we transit through a narrow channel we man a lot more watches for both navigation and force protection reasons) followed by about 4 hours of replenishment made for a very long day for the entire crew.
 
The Torres straits, by the way, are gorgeous. The sun was so bright you had to squint when you were topside. The sky was a silvery color and so was the water, except for up close where it was a murky turquoise color. There wasn’t a ripple on the water in any direction. There were reefs all around us; some had wrecked ships on them, and all kinds of exotic birds. If you ever get a chance to go there, I highly suggest it.
 
After the straits and our replenishment, we steamed straight for the gulf, which is a lot farther away from Australia than it looks! There’s not much in between the two places, either. Except for that India country… and Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Anyways, we headed straight for the Gulf, where we played around with some of this Global War on Terror/Operation Iraqi Freedom stuff, and then pulled into Bahrain. It’s a pretty cool country. I totally understand why Michael Jackson wants to live there. It’s a lot more westernized than most of us expected. We had Dominoes, KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, etc. all at our disposal. They have a pretty good support activity over there for the size of the base, so we were able to spend a lot of time off the ship, even though we were all working pretty long hours trying to fix some of the damage done by the hurricane. I bought a rug there, and then remembered that I live on a ship when I couldn’t find anywhere else to store it but my bed. So every night, I go to sleep with it. My roommate, Anne, and I went to the spa at the Ritz-Carlton one day for massages. It was a wonderful change from shipboard life. We were only in port for a few days before we got underway again to do what we came here for. It’s pretty boring, actually. We mostly just sit here and wait for something to happen. I like it this way.
 
I don’t know when we’re going to pull into port again, but apparently it isn’t going to be anytime soon. If we’re underway for 55 days at a time, we get to have a beer day on the 45th day, so that will be fun. Although, I know that the engineers will eventually get sick of this underway stuff, and break something so that we have to pull into port. That’s what engineers do best. There are only 100 days left in our scheduled deployment, so eventually they have to let us pull into port somewhere. All this underway time does have some benefits, though. Last week I had my Combat Information Center Watch Officer board, and passed. That means I’m about 1/3 done with earning my Surface Warfare Officer qualification. I still have to pass an Officer of the Deck board, and then a final Surface Warfare Officer board. The CICWO letter alone means that when we’re not in this area, I can run combat, which includes all of the electronic sensors, external communications, and weapons. I’m glad I finally have it. I hope it won’t be too long until I finish with all of my qualifications. Then I might have more time to write you all e-mails!
 
I hope everything is going well with all of you, and I hope to hear from you soon.
 
JoEllen

Friends and Family,
 
I apologize for not keeping in touch with most of you over the past few weeks. Hopefully through these mass e-mails I will be able to keep you all more informed as to what’s going on in my life. If you see anyone who I’ve left off the list, please forward this to them, and give me their e-mail address if they want to receive any I might send in the future.
 
I got underway on February 27th, I think… Whatever the Monday was. I got to drive (or 'conn') the ship out of Pearl Harbor. This was slightly scary because the channel exiting Pearl Harbor to the ocean is quite narrow, and for the last part of it, you think you’re in safe waters, but you actually have very shallow water on either side of you. At the Academy, I drove out of Pearl Harbor on a frigate twice, and ran aground both times. Thankfully, just as we were about to cast off our lines, the winds died down and shifted to a perfect position, and I had no problems pulling off the real thing.
 
As soon as we got out of restricted waters, my Captain saw that there was an oiler about twenty miles away, and decided that it would be a wonderful time to get some fuel; not that we needed it. So, I transferred from “conning officer” to “Junior Officer of the Deck”, which means I got to do stuff like make sure we were flying the correct flags and talking on the radio to other ships. It was a busy day.
 
We had a fairly boring transit to the French Territory of New Caledonia. Being the only person on the ship who speaks French, I was pretty busy translating. In fact, for the three days we were there, I didn’t set foot off the ship. So, what I know about New Caledonia is that they speak French, they have beautiful weather, it’s pretty dirty, their currency is the French Pacific Franc, which is worth about 10 cents American, during WWII we put 200,000 soldiers on this island, which had a population of about 100,000 at the time, and then in 1958 or so, the French took it over – which has never really sat well with the natives. The natives there are of Samoan ancestry, and they like to get drunk and have machete fights. So, that was cool.
 
A few days later we pulled into Sydney, Australia. It’s quite beautiful there. The city’s surprisingly clean for how big it is. Most everyone we met was very friendly. I got to spend a lot of time out in town, which got my boss somewhat aggravated with me, which in turn inspired me to spend more time in town. We pulled in in the afternoon and the Australian Navy held a small reception for the officers at the American Club downtown. It was fun. I went out with some of the officers from my ship after that to Darling Harbor. The next day, I went on a tour of the Hunter Valley wine country, which is about two hours north of Sydney. I got to taste and buy lots of wine. There was lots of beautiful scenery to take our minds off of work, and the wine helped a bit.
 
After spending my third day on the ship standing watch, I started the fourth with a tour of Sydney. We saw the historic parts of downtown, the Sydney Harbour Bridge (yes, harbour with a 'u') and then went North up to Manly Beach. There’s a beautiful surf there. At the end of the tour, we went to the Opera House and saw that. I took lots of video that day. The inside of the concert hall was very impressive. We didn’t get to see the opera hall, but we did see the new area, which was just opened by the Queen a week or so ago. After the Opera House, I went with two other officers on my ship to “The Rocks”, which is the historic part of Sydney. It also happens to be the bar district, and this day just happened to be St. Patrick’s Day. The ensuing craziness is not fit for e-mails.
 
The next afternoon we went shopping downtown. I didn’t buy anything, but I found some great deals for other people. The exchange rate was really good. We decided to sit down for a drink at a restaurant and ended up staying there for four hours or so. We had a lot of fun. The wine was good, and apparently we stole blankets from the restaurant. So, I have a souvenir.
 
If you’re addicted to the weather channel, you might be aware that there are about three hurricanes (or willy willies or whatever they call them here) off of the Eastern coast of Sydney. They kept us in Sydney for an extra day, and are very threatening to our plans. We’re not going to get stuck in a storm or be in physical danger or anything, but we might have to change our logistics once again, and honestly, for all it’s worth, I’d rather just go through the storms!
 
We’re not really sure where we’re going, or when we’ll get there, or what we’ll do when we get there. We don’t really care, though. So, everything’s alright.
 
I hope you’re all doing alright, and I wish that I had more time to correspond with each of you individually. Please feel free to send me e-mails, and I’ll address them as much as I can.
 
Love,
 
JoEllen