zzyzzogeton
Did you ever spend time at Mare Island Naval Shipyard?
For all of 3 weeks. I was sent to a 2 week NBC Decontamination School there. Drove from San Diego to San Francisco over a weekend, arriving on Sunday. Checked into the Hotel. Next morning, I drove over the bridge to check in.
Someone had changed the start date, pushing it back a week, but no one notified my ship (USS CONSTELLATION CV-64).
I was a week early.
So I called back to North Island where the Connie was berthed and asked "What do I do?" since the ship was scheduled to get underway for a couple of weeks right after I was supposed to get back from the school, but if I stayed came back "home" and went back for the school, I'd get done while the ship was underway.
Took the PTB a couple of hours to get it all straightened out. Since they would have had to pay mileage twice, pay for 2 days of hotel already, blah, blah, blah, the solution was-
I would stay the extra 4 days (TWThF) at Mare Island "studying with the instructors", take the class the following 2 weeks, drive back to San Diego, BUT stop at Miramar NAS, catch a Space-A hop to Hawaii on a cargo plane and the ship would fly an SH-3 in to Pearl Harbor to pick me up.
Great plan.
Bad execution.
Got to Miramar just fine. Cargo plane FODs an engine as we are about to take off. 8 hour delay to change out the engine. Fog rolls in after dark so we can't take off.
Doesn't clear until 1000 the next day.
We finally take off nearly 32 hours after our originally schedule time.
Finally get to Hawaii. Ooh. Ooh. There's a hurricane coming from Mexico way. All the ships in the exercise are running away from it. Away from Hawaii. Out of helo range. No CODs available. Hurricane fizzles out, Just a bunch of rain.
3 days later, I get word to go get on a plane back to San Diego as the battle group won't be going back via Hawaiian waters.
The only flight back to CONUS for the next 2 days was to Travis AFB up near ..... San Francisco. Got to Travis. Got a ride down to El Toro MCAB where I caught a CH-46 to Camp Pendleton. Caught a ride with a Marine Company down to San Diego 32nd St NavSta where they were boarding some Gators for deployment to WestPac. Took a taxi over the Coronado Bay Bridge to North Island. Spent 2 days in my apartment waiting for the ship to arrive since it was the weekend and I couldn't find anyone of North Island Naval Air Station to fly me out to the Connie as she approached SD.
All in all, that 2 week school had me off the ship for nearly 5 weeks. The CO, XO, Ops Boss (all O-6s who eventually made Flag) and the Underway Watchbill Coordinator were all extremely unhappy with the entire scenario. Fortunately, they were not unhappy with me. Especially after they looked over my trip report and saw what all I had to do to get "home".
I had a very good CPO
who kept my Division running in my absence, although I had a TON of paperwork to catch up on.
The only people unhappy with me and the over-all chain of events was the Supply Officer (another O-6 who later made Flag) who had to figure out who had to get paid what for my travels and the Chief Engineer, who had sent me to the school in the first place, whose budget had to be tapped to pay for it.
