Our engineering inspection is complete, except for the debrief. All in all I think we did a whole lot better than anyone expected, but there are some problem areas for sure. My Sailors and their gear fared much better than most, but when we do the combat systems inspection next week (yes, they scheduled ULTRA-E and ULTRA-C back to back), there will be a fair dose of bad news to temper the enthusiasm. We shall see….

After running around fixing things for the last two days, we’ve made minimum equipment for the underway portion of the inspection and are finally headed fair for sea. Now we’ve got six to eight hours of drills starting this afternoon, and with any luck ULTRA-E should be passed and opening by taps.

I’ve been running around with my hair on fire for the last four weeks. I checked in just in time for the final month of preparations for an ULTRA-E. For those of you that haven’t been keeping up with changes in the fleet, that’s what Big Navy calls the engineering Initial Assessment and Underway Demonstration. And, since it’s my first tour in an engineering billet in, oh about 13 years, I’ve been living on a steep learning curve. Things should get back to the more routine hectic pace in a couple of weeks.

It took a little longer to get back into blogging than I planned, but I’ve made it to the ship. And, after just two days of turnover and another five of peeling the onion to identify the problems, it’s clear I’m in for a busy tour.

The trip to Japan ended up going fairly smoothly. Except for the part where CINCHOUSE and I had to get three cranky boys and ten bags through immigration and customs and to another terminal to get a connecting flight within Japan. Oh, and kid #2 got sick and I got a nice case of pink eye and some kind of virus.

Once in Japan, I had one day with the family to get some key things done before flying out to the Gulf of Thailand to meet the ship. We got done what we needed to, though, and the family will only have to stay in transient housing – basically a hotel – for about two weeks.

Thailand was an experience all by itself. I’ve been an Atlantic Fleet Sailor my whole career, so this is my first real tour in the Far East. I went to Okinawa for a couple of weeks back in the late ‘90s while I was a reservist, but I know now that didn’t paint the whole picture. I’ll go into that in more detail soon.

Enough is enough, I guess. Blogger has finally pi$$ed me off completely and forced me to take in all lines and look for a new home port. So, here I am, in a better application and with the control I’ve always desired. After all, I’ve got a great husbanding agent now – me! Stand by while I conduct some casualty control and get things shipshape.