An early wake-up

Today it hardly feels like the ship is moving. We awoke fairly quickly this morning having forgotten that we were going to start drills at 0800 (8:00am). Somehow I managed to miss that on the plan-of-the-day. The alarm went off at 6:30 and I though ... that doesn't make sense, I must have forgotten to reset the alarm after getting on the ship. Back to dream-land. That was, of course, until Jake came knocking on my door with a "wakey, wakey, wakey!"



Drills have been going well, just going over all of the safety equipment and operations we need to follow in the event of an emergency. How do we get an injuried diver out of teh water? How do we use the O2 system? How do we get them to the sick bay? How do we get them to the re-compression chamber? We go through everything.



Just after drills and lunch it became clear that we were no longer moving ... hmmm. it appears the engineers had noticed something strange and thought there might be something caught in one of the propellors. So we, put a swimmer over the side to check things out. After a brief dip by Gaetano, we got the all clear and are back on our way again. We'll see how things go from here.



We certainly can't complain. So far the food has been excellent and, when we're inside, we can hardly tell that the ship isn't still tied up at the dock. The seas have been flat calm all day, let's hope that continues ...

On our way ...

We were supposed to leave the dock yesterday at about noon. We arrived at the ship to find that one of the small boats was having engine issues and that we would have to delay sailing until at least 4:00 that afternoon. Not a huge big deal, we had plenty to do to get the ship ready for our two months out at sea. At a little before 4 it became clear we would not be sailing that day. Another night at home and I didn't hear anyone complaining. We are all excited about the trip, but another night in one's own bed never hurt anyone.



We awoke this morning to a day much sunnier than yesterday, made our way down to he ship and were ready to set sail. Would it happen ... only time would tell. A few hours later the call was made and the crew started to make ready for sea. The gangway was raised and we were off.



As we steamed out of Pearl Harbor, past Ford Islands and what was once the second tier of Battleship Row, we made our last calls home and started to feel the south swell under our feet. After a few weeks of often harried preparations, we are on our way. Our first stop will be French Frigate Shoals on Sunday afternoon. We have much to do before we arrive, but we are all looking forward to getting back in the water again.