USS George Washington Friends and Family Day 2013

J. got home from his summer patrol last Friday ... and we turned around and got right back on the USS George Washington at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning!  Sometimes the carrier's have special days where friends and family members can come aboard and see what it is like to live on the ship - Friends and Family Day.  I had been on the carrier before (I blogged about it here), but had never done a Friends and Family Day.  We had to be on board by 7:00 a.m. and we were underway at 8:00.  

Before boarding the carrier

Breakfast in the Hangar Bay (this is not typical - usually the sailors eat in wardrooms and the hangar bay is full of airplanes!)

I had three goals for the day ... (1) See a jet take off and land on the carrier, (2) ride the elevator, and (3) find the onboard Starbucks!

Goal #3  = complete.

With our coffee in the ward room ... unfortunately, it was not as good as the real deal :(

Watching the boat get underway from the flight deck

On the flight deck

The center line of the "runway" on the flight deck

Leaving Yokosuka

The tower

Squadron friends!

Taking the flag pole down for flight ops

J. and I with the open sea in the background

Take 2

In the CATCC - or air traffic control for all you non-Navy folks.  The screen on the far left shows what is going on on the flight deck and the two screens in the middle have the flight ops for the day.  It tells you what jet is going up (they are all numbered), who is flying it and when they take off and land.

Every night and in bad weather, each squadron has a representative sitting in CATCC if someone from their squadron is flying.  That's our Shadowhawk seat with the rising sun on it!

Riding the elevator from the flight deck to the hangar bay!  It went SO fast.

Mrs. S. and I

Just hanging out at hangar bay level ... over the ocean.  No big deal.

The tower from the elevator on hangar bay level.

Mr. S., J., and Mr. Bag-O riding the elevator.  Apparently this is not something they get to do everyday.  Although it would be SO much easier than running up and down those ladder stairwells all day.

Mrs. Bag-O, Mrs. S and I riding the elevator back to the flight deck

Goal #2 = check.

After our elevator rides, we got spots for the air show.

Testing the JBD (jet blast deflector)

The tower

FOD walk down ... they complete this before all flight ops.  They are looking for foreign debris on the flight deck that might blow into a jet intake.

Jets!

Talons coming in for a touch and go ...

and he's off again

Chippie's coming in for an arrested landing (trap)

On the wire!

The jet makes the wire look like a piece of elastic when it snaps forward

Getting ready to take off again

Off the boat

Goal #1 = complete.

Fly by with a jet from each of the 6 squadrons of Carrier Air Wing 5

And then the Destroyers did a gun demonstration for us

After the sea power demonstration, we headed back down into the hangar bay for lunch and then took an afternoon nap.

I took this video while we were waiting in line for lunch.  The GW was moving!  J. says that it doesn't typically move this fast.

It was a really cool experience to go out on the carrier for a day.  It was clearly not a typical working day, but I just could not imagine being on that boat every single day.  I have a whole new level of respect for the sailors that spend months at a time deployed on an aircraft carrier.

And now, every time J. tells me he is flying on deployment, I will have a clear picture in my head of him being shot off the end of the flight deck.  Yikes.

Hong Kong - Day 3

On our third day in Hong Kong, J. had to stand duty.  This meant that he had to be back to the carrier by 10:00 a.m. and wouldn't be back to the hotel until after 10:00 a.m. the following day.  It wasn't the best day of our trip, but I knew in advance that he would have to have duty one day and I was just glad it was in the middle of our week so we got time together on both ends.

I also was able to go out to the carrier and visit him while he was on duty, so I still got to spend some time with him!

The view of Hong Kong from the ferry boat

Stonecutters Bridge

Hong Kong Island

USS George Washington

It was a pretty cool experience going out to the boat.  It was my second visit to the USS George Washington (I blogged about my first trip here).  The ferry boat ride took about an hour and it definitely was not a smooth trip, but it was a great view of of the city and it was fun to experience first hand what the boys go through on a port call when the boat can't pull directly into port.

I also got another tour of the boat and saw some new things:

The freebie board.  

Every time they land on the carrier, the pilots get a grade on how well they landed.  The greens are the best ... I forget what yellow means, brown and white are bad.  J. actually got an award this half of cruise for being one of the best new pilots on the boat!  Even though he went on a partial deployment last year, he is still considered a new pilot (nugget) since he wasn't there for the whole cruise.  They award the Top 5 Nuggets and J. got second!  Another guy in his squadron got fourth, so obviously our new guys are doing pretty darn good!

The view of Hong Kong from the flight deck

It was so humid that my camera lens kept fogging up, so some of these pictures are blurry.  It was cool to actually see the jets on the flight deck.  It kind of puts everything in perspective, size wise.

Jets with the tower in the background

Nose to nose with J.'s jet

More jets + the tower

Hong Kong ... I thought this was the best view of Hong Kong I saw all week

The tower

America

After we wandered around the flight deck, we went up into the tower.  It was pretty cool and the guy standing duty in the tower showed me Hong Kong Disney through the binoculars!  I asked him if he spied on people on the flight deck with those binoculars and he told me yes!  Haha, he also told me it was amazing what people do out on the flight deck, thinking that no one is watching.

The flight deck from the tower

J. in the Air Boss chair ... he looks pretty good huh?

The boat does not have stairs ... it has ladders.  Just walking around the boat is exhausting.

The hanger bay with the American flag and the Chinese flag which was hung up for the reception that was held on the first night

I can't remember what the official name of this room is, but it is the anchor room

There were two huge anchors holding G.W. in place

Anchor #2

You could see right down into the water!

After my tour, we went back up to the flight deck to watch the sun set over Hong Kong.  This was my favorite activity every day!

The sun setting over the outlying islands and an American Destroyer

The sun setting over Hong Kong ... J. took these pictures so I'm not sure if he used a different setting or if this was just the color variance between the two sides of the sky

Hong Kong

Jets + Tower + City

The tower lit up

The sun setting over the jets!

Afterwards, I took the ferry boat back to Fenwick Pier where I met up with Mr. and Mrs. S.  We took a cab back to our hotel and everyone came up to my room to hang out for a bit.

This was definitely not your typical tourist day in Hong Kong.  I feel pretty lucky to have had the opportunity to see Hong Kong from a vantage point that most tourists don't get to see.  And it was nice to be able to see J. even though he had to be at the boat all day!