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Captain's Log
July 16, 2007
Out of the eight weeks of this cruise,
we will only experience four Sundays underway. We are in
port the remaining Sundays and two of the four at sea will
be coming home where we expect the weather to be much colder
across the north Pacific. So, we took the opportunity on
Sunday to have another good weather BBQ for dinner meal. It
was the traditional sliders and rollers, which is a nice
laid-back meal easy to eat while not sitting at a table. It
was a low-key affair with students mingling and music
playing across the fantail.
One of the more popular deck training
program assignments is the mandatory construction of a
canvas “sea bag” by each deck sophomore. This is a cruise
tradition going as far back as I know of at CMA. Most alumni
will remember their own attempts at the seaman’s trade of
hand sewing canvas along with the sea trade’s admonishment
of “no homebound stitches now!” (longer and longer spacing
between stitches as you get near the end of a seam.) Every
year at the end of cruise during our Sinbad Games, we
actually have a bag showing contest where the best bags are
judged and prizes awarded in several categories. We will
bring you pictures of that event when it happens. In the
meantime, students are everywhere when they have some free
time working on their bags. In this picture, we see the
tools necessary to stitch canvas.
The seaman sews each stitch with a
triangular tipped needle carrying the waxed sail twine. In
order to push the needle through multiple layers of thick
canvas, the sewer much gain more leverage than you can get
pushing a needle with just your finger tips. In order to
obtain the force necessary to push the needle through each
stitch of canvas, the back of the needle is pushed with a
leather “palm” while the sewer makes sort of a fist action
with their entire hand. The palm contains a small encased
metal bowl in the thumb part of the palm that the back of
the needle is pushed against. There are various stitches
that can be made, depending on the exact purpose of the
canvas project and the type of seam being made – straight
stitch, round, baseball, herringbone and others. You can
also use palm and needle to sew rope into canvas or to make
a grommeted hole for line to pass through. Here we see Cadet
Timothy Demelo working on his bag.
At 0930 this morning (Tuesday), we
passed about 80 miles south of Iwo Jima (Sulfur Island), the
site of the infamous WWII battle that started on Feb. 19,
1945 and lasted to March 16, 1945. In that monumental
struggle, out of a U.S. invasion force of 70,000, there was
a combined U.S. service casualty list of 28,686, with 6,821
killed. Approximately 1,070 were killed in the mop-up
operation alone – a testament to the tenacious last-ditch
defense of the Japanese. Out of the Imperial Japanese Army’s
garrison of over 21,000, there were only 216 survivors.
There were 27 Congressional Medal of Honor recipients in
this 1-month engagement. Thirteen (13) were awarded
posthumously, evidence to the incredible ferocity of
violence to this epic struggle in Japan’s attempt to prevent
the establishment of a U.S. airfield that could provide a
fighter escort base for the B-29s flying from the Marianas
Islands to cities in Japan. It would also be a crucial
emergency landing field mid-way in the bomber’s run to and
from her industrial cities. To the Japanese, Iwo Jima
represented the first invasion of the actual home islands
that had to be defended at all costs and to the last man.
Of the many superb books written on the
battle, I would recommend to those readers wishing to
understand this battle more, and the aftermath of its
influence upon the American psyche for years to follow, to
read James Bradley’s The Flags Of Our Fathers (also
made into a Hollywood movie directed by Clint Eastwood). He
is the son of one of the famous flag raisers captured in Joe
Rosenthal’s famous “picture”, which was really a second
raising of the flag atop Mt. Suribachi. Of these six flag
raisers, only three survived the battle. John Bradley, the
author’s father and a Navy Corpsman in the battle who
received the Navy Cross medal, was the longest living
survivor from the historical picture. [Source: The
Atlantic, June 2004]
In order to save operating costs and to
permit us the long range out to the Far East from the U.S.
west coast, we normally travel on one main engine operation
almost the entire time while on cruise. Because of the fuel
expense, we rarely run at full speed with both main engines
running at 120 shaft RPM (18.5 knots). At that speed the
shaft is turning a nineteen (19) foot propeller twice per
second. But, there are occasional times when running at high
speed becomes necessary and we want to be sure that all of
the control systems necessary to run the engines at this
high load are functioning properly. This morning, the Chief
Engineer and I decided to giver her a test run to see if all
systems were operating normally and to assure ourselves that
we were capable of the sea speed bell if needed. So for
about an hour, we got the satisfaction of feeling the ship
plowing through the seaway at maximum speed. It does feel
good and the ship rides nicely to the increase in power.
With only a few minor control signal problems discovered and
easily corrected, we had to slow down to our normal cruising
speed after only an hour’s long bliss. Ahh, such is the
reality of economics. Nevertheless, it was good to feel the
increased wind over the deck, even for just such a short
time.
More later as we continue to close of
the Philippine coastline.
Captain Leyda
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