Life onboard the ship June 24

Right now, my day begins early in the morning with helo and boat call a ways beginning around 4. These reminders go over the com to make sure that people know that they have about 10 minutes to get to the flight deck for their transport. Then a call of “Reveille, reveille” goes out about 6 am, but my day starts about 6:30 am. I dress quickly and then climb all the way to the top of the boat to mess hall aka “the galley.” Right now, breakfast consist of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. We are short of supplies right now so no cereal. We are also out of fresh fruits and vegetables, but a supply should be coming tomorrow if the seas cooperate. We even ran out of MREs last night and everyone going ashore had to have a boxed meal prepared for them.
The food in the galley is not bad but the meals are heavy on the starches. We always have some sort of potatoes at each meal and rice at least once a day. I am told that we normally have a salad bar to eat from, but since we are out of fresh food, we have not had that luxury. Normally, there is always soup or chilli available as an option for the afternoon and evening meals. There is always soft serve at dinner for those of us who crave ice cream after a long hard day. What is interesting is that all of their portions are one-size-fits-all and that usually is enough to feed the hungriest sailor.  I also believe that all of our meals are fortified with fiber to counteract the effect of the daily MREs. I definitely will not go hungry here on board the ship, but I look forward to some fresh fruits arriving sometime soon.
At 7:00, I report to the pharmacy to see what the plan of the day form me will entail. For the last few days we have been working on spreadsheets that record and tally how many meds have been given out and who needs more supply. We also spend much of the day waiting on shipments of meds and prepacking what meds we still have onboard. One interesting thing to note is that all of our meds come from the USA. We are not allowed to buy meds from our host country because they may not have been manufactured in FDA approved plants. One might ask why can’t we treat the people with medications from their own country and the truth is that we can’t bring their medications on board the ship because we may accidently use those meds on US citizens on the ship.
After an hour our team will muster at 8:30 downstairs in Radiology. Muster is the navy term for meeting. We will go over the POD (plan of the day) which includes a quote of the day, military history of the day, lunch and dinner menus, and other trivial knowledge. Then one of the officers will give a brief about things that need to be done or updates for the day. Then we are off to our stations for the rest of the day.
One of the things that I enjoy is the call for Sweepers. Around 8 am and 3pm each day there is a call over the com that “Sweepers, sweepers. Help keep our ship clean.” This is our daily reminder to clean our assigned station. In the pharmacy, we are in charge of cleaning our work spaces, but we also need to clean several places outside of the pharmacy. One morning, I had to wash the handrails along the side of the stairs and down the stairwell until the next floor. Another time, I was in charge of wiping down the blue AT&T phones right around the corner of the pharmacy. Everyone has a task to keep the ship clean.
As civilians on the ship we are in charge of doing our own laundry. Our assigned days for laundry are Tuesdays and Thursdays and then everyone can do laundry on Sundays, but there is usually a line for the washers and dryers. On days that I am aboard the ship working, I can run downstairs and put my laundry in. It is important that you use only high efficiency laundry soap otherwise it gets very sudsy.
At night lights out is around 9:30 in my overflow berthing because so many people have to be up by 4 am. Evening prayer is said over the com at 10:00. You can stay up as long as you want but for most people the day starts very early. In saying that, I need to get to bed pretty soon since I am heading out tomorrow morning for my 3 day trip to Loma Larga.
Photo Album