With just 25 days to go until my Coast Guard retirement, todays 20 Years a Coastie is the next in a series about several short 1 or 2 week Deployments I did out of Miami while stationed there from 2005-2009. Yesterday I touched on the Key West Det. Today, We get back underway on the Coast Guard Cutters. Some of yall may remember from my previous posts about how much I enjoyed deploying. From the Port Calls and the cohesion of the ship and helo Crews, it is an awesome experience. However, when deploying out of Miami, instead of being a 1 month deployment with the same Ship, it was more of a deck hopping evolution for a week or two between a couple of Ships, sometimes only spending a few nights before heading to the next one. And often we would Land Base out of Key West, GITMO, or another Island and just hop around to whoever needed us that day or whoever had fuel. It was still a lot if fun, but you didnt have the time to build the kind of tightness with the Ships Crew you might have otherwise had on a 30+ Day Det. And please dont misunderstand, the AvDet and the Ship still got along just fine. Plus, I was still helping out where ever I could, be it washing dishes, taking a turn on the Helm, or just snapping awesome pictures for the crew while they were conducting Emergency Drills. It was just different. But one thing was still the same. My favorite part of getting underway...Swim Call. And this time, I had a sweet dive camera to snap even better shots. These ones are from a great Swim Call and Fish Call we had while onboard the CGC Resolute in October, 2006. That deployment was with LDCR Cliff Don Taylor, LCDR Kevin Kerney, and fellow AMT Timmy Lae, where we spent some time in GITMO as well, which I will hit on later on. Timmy spent some time jumping from the bridge wings, and I had a blast just swimming around the boat getting some pretty cool shots. As always, it was a ton of fun, and a much needed break for the crew. I also threw in some Dolphin pics (the mammal, not the helo) from a December Det onboard the CGC Vigorous that same year. This is one of those really cool things that happens when you get underway, when a pod of dolphins will come out and play off the ships bow. Just one more thing that makes deployments amazing.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 10:07:42 +0000
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