Sao Tome, Africa

Hello family!!

Got u/w from anchorage at Sao Tome on Friday morning after spending a week on the “hook” 2 miles off the island. STP is a small island nation composed of two separate islands (Sao Tome, which we anchored off of, and Principe, we didn’t visit there). While there, we engaged in training with the STP Coast Guard. We held training on Search and Rescue and diesel/outboard engine repairs. My engineers stayed busy teaching and helping them fix a couple of their small craft. We also conducted tours onboard for dignitaries and military officials, and the crew got to go on a mountain hike and witnessed a breathtaking waterfall. I also conducted VIP tours for the American Ambassador to Gabon and STP and the workers for the local Voice of America, radio station. Overall, it was a good port visit operationally.

I got off the ship for one evening and even got to have some pizza. It was a busy port visit for me as we were experiencing problems with our A/C units. We have three 30 ton A/C units. But currently we’re having problems w/ 2 of them. With the local temps around 90 deg during the day, 1 A/C is not enough to keep the ship and electronic consoles cool. We t/s galanting for over a week trying to fix 2 of the A/C’s, but to say the least it was hot has HELL onboard. The temp inside the ship in my room and workspaces hovered around 90 deg during the day and not much cooler at night. We finally got another A/C back up yesterday and the ship cooled back off. However, it was a long week. Thus are the woes of being in Africa where getting the parts and materials you need is pretty difficult.

Sorry the pics are lean for this one, but I didn’t get out much and there aren’t a lot of pics taken by other sailors here. I think everyone is just ready to come home and the thrill of travel has waned as we completed our 20th port visit in just 4.5 long months. At any rate, here are a few from our Community Relations project at a local school. We delivered school supplies like paper, books, pens/pencils, crayons, and glue. The pics are priceless, and show what a positive impact we have where we’ve been in Africa.

The next stop is our last African Partnership Station visit, thus concluding our training and engagement in Africa. We still have a 3 more port visits, but one is a brief stop for fuel, one is a liberty port, and one is a port where we “chop” out of the AOR. We’ll have about 3 weeks of u/w time over the next month and a half, so we’ll be able to settle into an at-sea routine to do paperwork and training in preparation for our return to Norfolk. At this point in the deployment, the leadership challenge is keeping everyone’s head in the game so we can complete the last of our deployment and stay safe at sea when they all have their eye on home. I understand the effort, as my head is already thinking about home (well, it never really stopped, but coming home so soon consumes my thoughts as well). Keeping everyone focused is a daily challenge now though.