Greetings Se7en,

I was a sailor once, a long time ago. The called me a spook. Probably close to what you are doing now.

Aboard ship, we were cruising around San Clemente doing calibration testing, and we got a SAR call at night. A guy on a party yacht nearby had a heart attack, and we were going to go pick him up and use our helo deck to transport. When we got to station, we tried to launch our motor whale boat, but the idiot deck officer ordered the forward tending line released before the winch hook was unhithced. The whale boat turned broadside to the wake and swamped, washing most of the personnel out the back side. The Chief Corpsman managed to stay in the boat, but then the hook let loose and knocked him out. As our floundering crewmen were disappearing into the night, we asked the yacht to assist by picking up our guys while we spent the next 3 hours trying to winch up our boat. The problem was with a boat full of water, the winch motor wasn't rated for that load, and it fried. The chief corpsman being a good friend of mine, I got on a lift line and started barking orders. Soon we had about 30 guys on each of two lift lines and we hoisted that boat, full of water and an unconscious chief corpsman, up onto the mid deck. The yacht picked up our castaways, and the chief recovered from a concussion, and the guy with the heart attack got picked up by someone else and taken ashore, and our captain spent the next couple weeks wiping the egg off his face. I couldn't think of a man more deserving of ridicule.

After I left the ship (and the Navy) I saw that she made the international headlines again, this time in Sydney harbor. Apparently some moron in an open bow greenpeace boat got in front of the ship and the captain decided not to turn. They cut the boat, and the picture on the front page of the paper I read showed a man clutching the bow of the ship as it headed for the dock. I believe that one got the old man a letter of reprimand in his folder. Good for him.

The name of the boat, the USS Oldendorf, DD-972.