Day 1: Long day, good day.

It’s 7:15 pm EDT in Wheeling, West Virginia and I’m sitting on a picnic table on the main deck of a WWII era landing craft watching the sun set over the Ohio River. Which of those things are surprising? That I’m on a 80-year-old war ship, or that there’s a picnic table on the main deck?

In my last post, I mentioned this trip so rather than rehash the how-I-got-here part of the story, let’s start with what I’ll be doing for the next 10 days onboard ship.

The ship left her home port in Evansville, Indiana about two weeks ago headed for Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. She docked for a couple 4 days giving tours to the public as she does most every year. Yesterday, she pulled anchor and started her return trip to Evansville, first stopping in Wheeling, where we’ll be for about 4 days, then on to Marietta for 3 or 4 days, and back to Evansville on the 18th. Along the way, we’ll go through a series of locks, which is a pretty cool experience. I’ll be sleeping and eating with the crew and standing a 4-hour watch every 12 hours.

I haven’t figured it all out quite yet, but it seems that duty stations are divided into three sections: Engineering, Deck, and Navigation. I’m assigned to Engineering, but there will be times when I’ll be asked to take on other duties as needed. Like tomorrow…one of the Deck Officers asked me to lead a tour of children through the ship. I have no idea how old they are, but most kids are only interested in how fast the ship goes (about 7 kts at standard power of 600 RPM) and how many guns it has (40MM and 20MM canons) and how far she can go on a tank of gas (about 24,000 nautical miles). Rarely do they ask about her long career. But I’ll tell them anyway.

My friend Amy Gray gave me the grand tour of my duties in Engineering. I made notes and borrowed the procedures manual to study the 9,000 ways to hit your head on a steel bulkhead before turning in, but two of the crew are playing guitar on 01 deck and the sun is starting to set. Think I’ll pull up a chair and listen.

I’ll write more tomorrow.