I didn’t have much unpacking to do. My phone equipment first, just to get things organized. I snapped a couple of pictures also. Then I went to the communications room, more of a closet actually. I scoped out the French intercom system that quit on them. I had never seen such a strange wiring color in my life, lots of pastels. I mentioned that it was a French phone system. The ship was originally French, the Monet, and it carried cargo and passengers on around-the-world trips. The passenger section still looked a bit like a cruise ship, not like the ones now, more sedate, not as much glitz.
I determined the best way to remove the old system and keep the extension wiring intact. I didn’t want to have to do a lot of tracing from one end to the other which can be very time-consuming. The best method was to remove the wiring one extension at a time and tie wrap the pair together and give it a number, not just rip the thing out all at once. It would be a tedious, sweaty job, but I could handle it. Once the old one was out, the new one, with matching extension numbers (I think) would go in and then we would start connecting. One crew member would call me on a two-way radio, and tell me where he was, I would connect the phone and call him on the extension, to verify. First I would have to show the guys how to attach a wall jack and install the phone, which for them would not be hard. They would be doing that, while I removed the old system. There were some special installs, like deck phones in a weatherproof box with loud bells and a loud bell with bright strobe light in the engine room, I would take care of those. The strobe light would bounce off any bright component in the engine room and let the engineer on duty, who was wearing ear protection, know a call was coming in, and then he could go to the engine control room and answer it.
So I had a plan, but first things first. Time to get something to eat. I was invited to eat with the officers in their mess which used to be the dining hall of the passenger section of the ship. I found out real quick that a merchant marine crew eats really well. I mean really well, especially on this ship. They had a two-star chef who used to own a fancy restaurant in Seattle, got tired of the pressure of running it, quit, sold it, and went to sea. I knew this chef, Charlie, I think, and he was on the ship in Sunnyvale. I was really surprised to see him here, he not so much to see me, the whole crew knew I was coming. It is a small world when you think about it.
I enjoyed my steak, salad, and cheesecake, and then hit my cabin for a bit of phone system assembly and pre-programming. I didn’t work too late, because I was just about spent from all my time in the air.
I got an early start after a very good breakfast. I won’t bore you with all the minute details of the cut-over as we phone folks call it. I will tell you it went pretty smoothly except for one phone in the cargo hold that kept shocking folks when they used it. The metal cage it was hanging on had some kind of ground short, but we eventually isolated the phone with a plate of plastic behind it. I installed the deck phones and the engine room, and the bridge and programmed it all with some special access codes for the officers so they could make outside calls over their Sat system, which was very expensive to do.
The old system was removed and mine is on the backboard. The wiring to each cabin and other extensions, is on the floor, intact, and labeled with its location.
It took me four days to finish the installation. Another day to program and train the officers in how to use the digital sets. I finished early but for a while wasn’t sure when I would make it back home. I called Diane from the ship to let her know I arrived safely but couldn’t tell her exactly when I would be home. I had no return flight yet and there might be another problem.
I took a life-saving course while on the ship, some training in case the ship got in trouble and we had to abandon it. This meant wearing a survival suit, a big bulky orange thing that keeps you from dying from hypothermia. I told you the water was cold. This class took place in the dining room just after the ship set sail, along with all the other ships, for a 2-day shakedown cruise out in the ocean and around the island. The captain set on one of the big window seats, talked while I watched the horizon go up past his head, and down past the bottom of the window, and do so quickly. After viewing this for a while I may have turned a bit green because Charlie asked me if I was okay. “Sure,” I said. “Man, those waves are tall”.
I didn’t have time to worry over the condition of the sea after hearing the news the captain told us next.
“Well guys, it seems Sadaam is acting up again. He violated his no-fly zone over Iraq and that upsets our folks greatly, so we may be heading to the gulf at any time. Derrick, if we go, you are going with us, there will be no time to get you off this ship.”
Wow, looks like I could be heading for the hottest spot in the world,
“Okay, so if we go, it means sailing up the coast of Somalia so we need to have another pirate drill.”
The guys groaned.
“I know, I know, I don’t want to do one either, but you know we can’t let those folks on this ship under any circumstances, so let's just dig out the rifles and get it over with, oh and give one to Derrick as well, everyone needs to be armed.”
Double wow. The rifles looked like they were originally issued during WWI, not II.
One of the crew said “If I shoot this old thing it may kill me before it kills a pirate”
“Yea, well hopefully the pirate doesn’t know that” was the response.
We did a bit of ducking around passage corners, peaking thru hatches, pretending some bad pirate was trying to come on board or had. No bullets were fired and no phone guys were harmed during the drill, thank goodness.
I worked on my system while at sea, which wasn’t all that easy, with the ship moving up and down, but I managed.
The bridge of the Buffaloe Soldier. the First Mate is using the new digital phone. I think I installed an analog wall phone on the panel to my right.
I enjoyed my time on the Buffalo Soldier. The crew treated me really well, They asked me about what I did back in the States, how I learned to be such a good communications “engineer” and things like that. They also told me stories. There was one about a new crew member on another ship, who on his first day aboard, got drunk, stripped naked, climbed a crane, went out on the arm, and jumped into the bay. A Royal Marine was on jeep patrol and happened to be driving by in time to see the guy make his big leap. He was waiting on the restricted beach, arrested the person, and hauled him off sans clothes to the brig. He was on the next flight out, hopefully fully clothed. Those Marines meant business.
Charlie fed me really well. He had a BBQ smoker on the top deck. He used it to smoke fish. He told me that he would have hickory logs flown in to provide the smoke because coconut husks didn’t do it for him. He would smoke Wahoo and other fresh fish, and they had plenty of that, for hours, turn it into pate and deliver it to the officers’ club. He had a delivery to make and I was invited to go with him and the other ship’s officers.
We left around dinner time in a shuttle boat for the Officer’s Club. I found out that there was to be a change of command, a flag ceremony, for the Joint Forces Commanding Officer of Diego Garcia. He was a retiring admiral and a new person was about to become the head guy of the whole place.
We, civilians, stood along the back of the seating area as the honor guard came in, intros were made and the exiting Commanding officer gave a departing speech.
I was a bit shocked by what he said, he was retiring so I guess he felt he could say what he wanted to. He virtually fried his former commander-in-chief. He had not one good thing to say about the guy in the White House as well as other folks way back home in DC. I don’t know exactly what the folks in uniform thought about this, but it seemed they agreed with him for the most part. Afterall they were prepared to leave for the front line of a war at any moment.
We had a good dinner afterward, I was busy observing the comradery of the sailors of all kinds. And, I liked the Wahoo “dip” as they called it. We headed back to the ship after dark. It was a bit weird for me at first because I didn’t recognize the very starry night sky at all, no big dipper, none of the constellations that I knew. I realized that for the first time in my life, I was looking at the Southern Sky with the Southern Cross among other unfamiliar constellations up there.
Oh, the Baffaloe Soldier Captain told me that he had a flight booked for me in two days, I would be on a MAC flight to Fujairah Airport in the UAE where I would be met by their shipping agent with a temporary visa who would drive me across the country to Dubai. I would spend the night there and fly out the next day to Gatwick airport, in London on Emirates Airline. I didn’t expect to keep flying west and I certainly didn’t expect to visit the Middle East in such a fashion.
The next morning, my last day on the ship, Charlie, the first and second mates, decided to take me deep sea fishing out on the ocean.
Now the Indian Ocean, especially where we were is not heavily fished, not at all. The guys told me they were going after any big fish, Yellowfin Tuna, Wahoo, whatever was biting and they would bite a soda can pop top, anything shiny. We would take turns strapping into the chair and reeling one in. That sounded good, except for one important thing. The ocean around Diego Garcia was inhabited by Great White Sharks, and they were fishing for the same fish we wanted and they had no problem taking them from us. So that meant when you caught a fish, you couldn’t play around with it, you had to reel in it FAST or all you would end up with was a head.
They were not exaggerating about that, not one bit. When someone caught one the other folks would start yelling PULL! PULL!PULL! GET IT IN, GET IT IN! while the big tuna or whatever it happened to be was breaching out of the water, and off in the distance a big white toothy head was doing the same.
It took me a while to get why the first mate kept refilling his plastic cup of coke with Hydrogen Peroxide out of the brown bottle it normally comes in. I thought maybe he had a toothache or something. But that was not it, he was hiding his rum from a possible speed boat carrying a Royal Marine. The no alcohol rule went out to sea as well as on land.
When it was my turn to take the chair, which happened immediately after one of the trolling lines started to zing, I became a bit apprehensive, but once the fish started jumping out of the water and the guys started yelling, all I felt was excitement which became really great when it turned out I had caught a 48 inch, 48 pounds Wahoo.
Now according to Wikipedia A Wahoo is best known to sports fishermen, as its speed and high-quality flesh make it a prized and valued game fish. And that is the truth, it was prized to me. I would have loved to hang it on a wall back home.
That Wahoo! It was the biggest fish that I had hooked in my whole life. Charlie said it and the Tunas that were caught would be Sushi by nightfall. The Wahoo would be smoked but being that I was leaving before that took place, I would be going home with a bag of Wahoo that was already jerky.
The next morning I said goodbye to the crew. Who knew, as long as I was working for the Marine Tech company that sent me out here, I might see one of these great guys again. I hoped so.
I caught a ride to the airport with one of the Royal Marines. Turns out I was the only passenger on the flight. I loaded my toolbox and my bag into the terminal, where I was asked if I had anything to declare. I didn’t want to or think to tell the Marine about the 3lb zip lock bag of Smoked Wahoo jerky in my duffle bag.
“No, nothing, nothing at all,” I said. My passport was stamped and my bags went on the belt to the loading dock. All of a sudden the big black Lab, the same dog that meet us on my arrival, jumped up on the belt and started chasing after my bag.
“REX! get down from there!” the marine yelled (Rex may or may not have been the dog’s name, it has been over twenty years)
“ I don’t know what got into him, he has never done that before” He paused.
“You know, if he had started barking, you might be in trouble,” He said with a smile.
“Oh, well good thing he didn’t need to” was my response.
“Have a good flight then” I heard as I headed out to the plane.
The flight attendant told me to make myself comfortable, in any seat I wanted and if I wanted to move to any other seat go right ahead. And if there was anything I wanted in the way of snacks or soft drinks just let him know.
I told him thanks and kept the same seat for the next six hours. I read, slept, and watched a bunch of Home Alone movies, it was after Thanksgiving so why not.
It had been quite the adventure to get this far, but my trip around the world was not over not yet.
I set my 24-hour watch to UAE Time.
End of Part Two