a reception for Transportation persons from Sector Houston.
One last day of liberty and my first day of cooking breakfast. At Quarters, I was presented with an Eagle crew cover( baseball cap) and spent the remainder of the day on liberty.
On Wednesday, June 15, we left Galveston, accompanied by huge tugboats and a flotilla of Coast Guard boats from the local station.
For this leg of the trip, I was assigned to the wardroom galley. The galley was self-contained with a griddle, two stove“ eyes”, refrigerator, oven, sink and dishwasher / sterilizer. Every day, I woke up at 4-thirty a. m. and was at work by 5 a. m., to make coffee. Sometimes the crew beat me to the coffee pot and made the coffee ahead of time. Cadet mess cooks reported for duty and they set the table with silverware, glasses, water, juice and secured the breakfast meats and potatoes from the main galley. I cooked eggs to order, breakfast sandwiches, pancakes, French toast or whatever was
Flag Cabin dining.
their breakfast order and plates are prepared individually and served to them at the table. For lunch and dinner, this is repeated except that all the foods, except salads are prepared in the main galley. We were responsible for making fresh salads. After each meal, we washed all plates, silverware and serving dishes as well as cleaning the wardroom.
When we are at sea, we can do laundry on the ship. My first a�empt was an interesting misadventure— I put my clothes in the officer’ s washing machine and while it was washing them, the water on the ship was turned off for Damage Control training.
on the menu. Officers come to When the water was turned Auxiliarist the door ofDavid the galley Green, place demonstrates back the on, the machine wouldn’ t neapplication developed by Auxiliarist O’ Connor using his iPhone. go into spin cycle. After several a�empts to reset it, a crew member helped me take the soaking wet clothes out of the machine, up a deck, across the next deck and put them into another machine in the crew laundry room. I was advised not to overfill the machine with clothes as ODU’ s are
very heavy when wet and that combined with the movement of the ship, can cause a toploading machine to become unbalanced and stop working.
There are a lot of conventions that govern shipboard life. All the fresh water we used at sea was desalinated from ocean water by reverse osmosis( RO), so wasting water was not an option when you have 200 souls onboard. To conserve water, all the“ heads”
OVER THE BOW USCGAUX FIRST DISTRICT SOUTHERN REGION- WINTER 2023 17