Formalities

Last year Sarah & Paul went to the Washington Coast Guard Ball and spoke at length about how much they enjoyed themselves.  This year, Paul's brother Phillip who is an officer at headquarters was generous enough to offer me tickets to join their group at the Ball.

And the legwork didn't end there.  Phillip's wife, also Sarah (AKA "Sarah the Great"), tendered the invitation while giving me the number of their son's first grade teacher, and encouraging me to bring her as a date.  And what better first date could there be than a formal military ball, black tie and all?

I don't want to give the wrong impression, though.  It was a great deal of fun, and I enjoyed myself from start to finish.  Pretty good meal, excellent company, and even a few enjoyable speeches and toasts.  My friend Abby gave the official toast to the US Army, which was kind of neat.

Also, as my time in the service recedes further and further into the past, it gets harder to keep up any sense of connection to the Coast Guard.  Going to the Ball, especially with someone who wasn't a Coastie and needed a guide of sorts, was a nice way to feel like it was still something I am a part of (a very small part).  I may not have been the best representative, but we spent the evening with particularly excellent current and former Coasties like Abby, Phillip, and Sarah.

A good evening, and it's nice to pull out my tux every now and again.  Though I should probably work on my knots more - I spent about 20 minutes trying to get my bowtie right, without success.  I'll have to practice more before the company holiday party in a few weeks.

Cutter Tour

Baltimore June 2008

We found out recently through the SNAME email newsletter that the new National Security Cutter, USCGC Bertholf, would be visiting Baltimore this weekend and open for tours. Jane got the word out, and I joined her, Jen, and Zina to have a look. Jane and I got there before Jen and Zina, so we went for a walk around Fells Point. I had never been there before - it seems nice, but kind of geared towards tourists and nightlife (lots of bars). However, walking around was a good call, because we came across a green 1972 Buick Riviera, a "Boat-Tail." I've wanted this exact car since I was a teenager. I think it is absolutely beautiful. This one in particular even had a little Creature from the Black Lagoon hood ornament - very apropos, since this car is a beast. It probably drinks gas like it is water, and is thoroughly impractical in this day and age. But it is absolutely gorgeous. Jane was good enough to humor me as I gushed and took many photos. Once Zina and Jen arrived, we had a very nice tour. Obviously, we couldn't go everywhere we would have liked. The EM2 leading our tour asked the OOD if he could get us down into the engine room or even Main Control, but we were not allowed. A shame. But we did see the new 57mm gun, the bridge, the CO's cabin, the messdeck, and finished up with the stern-launched boats and the flight deck. The stern launch system still looks like it would be very tricky in a seaway, and I don't see how traversing the boats on a gantry crane can be safe if the cutter is rolling much. On the flight deck, they had parked on of the new re-engined and armed MH-65 helicopters. Apparently a bunch of the brass, including the Thadmiral and Secretary Chertoff were aboard the other day, so they were clearly bringing out all the new toys to show them off. But they were impressive - the armament on the helo even includes one of the big anti-material .50 caliber sniper rifles the Army uses from time to time. So it was a very successful trip up to the Charm City. On the way back Jane and I even stopped at the College Park Ikea, so I could get a more comfortable chair for guests in my tv room. As one of Ryan's friends once said after driving his tractor into an abandoned car (for a movie): "Not bad for a Sunday."

Things To Do

• Get a copy of the new Firefox 3.0 browser. Even better than the previous edition. There is an especially nifty feature where you can tag your bookmarks as well as sorting them into folders, and they can have multiple tags. And you can find all the bookmarks that share a tag just by typing the tag into the address bar - pretty slick.
• Go read katebeaton.com. It is hilarious - I especially like the one about Teddy Roosevelt, "Adventure Time." Teddy Roosevelt was awesome.
• Find something pulpy for summer reading. I recommend skipping the latest bestsellers and sampling a the work of a classic author of thrillers, Eric Ambler. The Care of Time is one of my favorites, and I'm reading Journey Into Fear right now. I've heard The Coffin of Dimitrios is also extremely good.
• If you are in the Baltimore/DC area and are interested in ships, consider heading up to the Charm City to tour the USCGC Bertholf, the first new major cutter in decades. She's scheduled to be open for tours the weekend of the 27th.
• Find something decent to watch on tv now that Battlestar is off the air until sometime in 2009. At least the mid-season finale was awesome.

Malfeasance!

It's been some time now, since I was in the Coast Guard, but I still look back fondly and have somewhat possessive feelings about the service. I'm an interested party, and a proud veteran.

Which is why the ongoing tragic saga of Deepwater saddens me so. The latest is that the Coast Guard is suing the contractors, since some of the modified boats had to be decommissioned due to structural and system problems. This is on top of the many other Deepwater issues - cost overruns, structural and system problems rumored with the new National Security Cutter, Congressional inquiries. Just read this and the related articles at the Times and you'll get the picture.

It is particularly distressing for me to watch this happen, since I enlisted in the Coast Guard in the early, halcyon days of Deepwater. As a budding naval architect, we were told that was our future in the fleet. "Yeah, our ships are old now, but we're revolutionizing the industry. It's a system of systems, and you are going to be on the front lines." We were all so interested in how it would turn out - it was terribly exciting, in a nerdy engineering way.

And watch as the steel finally gets bent, and the cutters slide down the ways, and it is so clearly a flawed creation. The task was too large, too ambitious, perhaps. But it was large and ambitious out of necessity. The current Queen of the Fleet, wearing the gold numbers of the oldest cutter in commission, is Acushnet, commissioned into the Coast Guard in 1946, after two years of Navy service. The fleet is old, and must be replaced almost wholesale.

And now the Coast Guard has announced they have the situation in hand; they've stood up and entire new Acquisitions Directorate, and they will manage Deepwater, and we are on course. I have my doubts... acquisitions is a challenge on normal defense programs. For a unique program like Deepwater, run by a service with little institutional expertise in acquisitions (since they haven't bought much in decades), it could be catastrophic.

The Coast Guard has proven its value to the nation again and again. It is a critical service, in war and peace. And to carry out its core missions for the next generation, it must recapitalize. News like what we've heard over the past few months creates in me grave concerns about the future of my beloved service.

Indoc

I was channel-surfing last night and ended up on the Military Channel. It's like the History Channel, but even more old war footage. At any rate, the program that had just started was on the US Service Academies. I've seen things like this before, so I watched so I could make fun of the Air Force kids at with their blue bus driver hats at the government play school out in the Springs. And maybe catch some little bits about my old home at CGA.

The show focussed on the first summer, variously called Beast, Plebe or Swab Summer. I admit I learned a few things about the other academies' first year programs, but it reinforced my perception that the other schools got all the good toys. Of course, none of them have EAGLE, but she wasn't even mentioned.

There wasn't a lot about New London; most of the hour concentrated on Colorado Springs, West Point, and Annapolis. So it took me until the 2nd CG segment to realize those were my swabs they were filming. As I paid closer attention, I was able to pick out my old classmates acting as cadre. I was away from the school during most of that swab summer, mostly on at aviation familiarization or sail training on the Luders yawls. So I never knew there was filming going on. It's a shame they didn't come aboard EAGLE - that's were Swab Summer really stands apart from the other indoctrination programs.

At any rate, I got real kick out of seeing my erstwhile classmates and swabbies in action. I think this program might be part of a series - I will be sure to check the channel in the future.