Class pics

Class 2-09

almost Ensign Knauss

Alfa 3 (Dan's platoon)

Report Date

We don't have the actual orders yet, but do have a report date. June 8th...or maybe June 9th. Dan was told Tuesday June 8th, but the 8th is a Monday and usually for flight school report dates are on Tuesdays. Once we get the orders then we can schedule the movers and deal with the housing situation.

Dan's great week!

As most of you probably know by now (and everyone who heard me scream in Target), we are headed to Pensacola for flight school! No idea when the report date will be. Official orders probably won't be out for a while yet. We are more than thrilled and ready to have our family back together. Landon is also excited to know that he will be seeing Riley again soon.

Thursday I flew up here to try to clear out the clutter in the house and also spend some time with Dan as long as liberty was granted. We got to spend yesterday afternoon and most of today together before I had to give him back. For the first time in a long time we went to a nice dinner last night (went to a fine dining place at the Mohegan Sun casino) and this afternoon we saw a movie. Very odd for us to be without the boys, but nice at the same time.

This morning just as we checked out of the hotel Dan received a phone call from a weird number. It was someone from USAA calling to tell him he won an iPod Touch in a drawing! USAA was on campus yesterday giving the OC's information about a special loan they offer to newly commissioned Officers and had several prizes you could enter a drawing for.

So all in all the past few days have gone very well for Dan, and our family. I am so proud of him for continuing to not give up as he strived towards his dream. It will be a great lesson to teach our boys as they get older that if you really want something and continue to persevere it will happen.

I did take a few pictures, not as many as I would have liked due to the nasty weather. Hopefully tomorrow after our pre-move inspection is complete I'll be able to post a few!

Eagle Update

22 Mar 2009

Sailing to the southeast under lower topsails, the foretopmast staysail, the main topmast staysail, and the mizzen topmast staysail. Weather: Winds southwesterly at 20 knots, seas 3-5 feet.

Thanks to the miracle of the internal combustion engine, we were able to make significant progress to the north (and directly into the teeth of a 25 knot wind) on Saturday and Saturday night. This will allow us to sail a bit more before mooring the ship at the end of our OCS training cruise. This afternoon, EAGLE conducted a progressive wear, which means the ship turned onto the opposite tack (similar to a jibe in a small sailboat). The catch was that it was accomplished with only 25 people, while everyone else enjoyed some time below decks on their "day off."
The progressive wear is a sailing maneuver which uses just the "watch on deck" or the personnel normally assigned during a given watch to trim sail. It takes about 2 hours, but the watch on deck will progressively turn the ship around by bracing yards, dousing and re-setting sail, and giving slow rudder commands. It is an impressive maneuver, and something that today's watch on deck can be proud of.
The wind is blowing a near-gale, the sun is shining, and EAGLE's lower sails are filling beautifully as we knock off miles under the keel at a fairly rapid rate.

Eagle tracking

Here's a site that shows where the Eagle is.

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NRCB

Eagle updates

These are from a site the Eagle has where they periodically do updates. It's actually through Facebook and you can't access it unless you have a FB account. Don't worry, it's not OPSEC violations to be posting!

Saturday March 14th:

Tonight we welcomed aboard the current Officer Candidate School class to EAGLE for their afloat training cruise. We will be getting underway within the next few days for a short sail off the east coast of the US, introducing these future officers to life at sea. It is an exciting time for the EAGLE crew because this is the first training cruise of 2009: time to get in gear for the sailing season!

with that update there were a few pictures, but none that included Dan.

Tuesday March 17th:

Underway from Little Creek, bound for points east and eventually New London. Weather: Northeasterly winds 20 knots and seas of 5-7ft. We were able to get underway from Little Creek today with OCS class 02-09 onboard and everyone is excited to get sailing.
After a bit of rain and wind, we cleared the sea buoy and set 5 sails: the inner jib, the fore topmast staysail, the main topmast staysail, the mizzen topmast staysail and the lower mizzen sail. Does that confuse you? If so, you can get a taste of what our OCS class is dealing with.
Learning the "language of the job" is something that all Coasties must deal with, whether they will eventually work in Aviation, Afloat Operations, Response, Incident Management, or Support jobs. By stressing our future leaders' brains and cramming in as much lingo as possible, we accomplish two goals:
1) We breed better tall ship sailors. By the end of their week aboard, OCS class 02-09 will be able to virtually sail the EAGLE by themselves. As cool as that is, it's not the main reason...
2) We prepare these young men and women (who will be ensigns in a matter of weeks) to learn and adapt by the "fire hose" method. When they report to their first unit as a commissioned officer, they are going to have a very short amount of time to "get up to speed" on their job and their role in the organization. By experiencing a bit of that aboard EAGLE, we hopefully set them up for success upon graduation.
In the near future, we'll continue to operate east of the mid-Atlantic states and conduct training. The sunset tonight was beautiful...it's great to be a sailor!

Wednesday March 18th:

Underway east of Virginia motoring in search of wind. Weather: Southerly winds at 3-5 knots and clear skies. We braced our yards on a starboard tack in the hopes that the wind will fill in from the south this afternoon. Unfortunately, we are only seeing puffs of wind occasionally, but we do believe it will blow a bit stronger overnight so we can put up some canvas.
Our training program is progressing well; today some OC's learned a bit about Celestial Navigation and charting fundamentals, while others donned Fire Fighting Ensembles to learn about shipboard damage control. Everyone also takes a turn in the galley or the scullery washing dishes, because it takes a lot of work to feed 180 people!
Hopefully the wind cooperates....

Friday the 13th=GREAT day!

Today was base camp day (you can see part of last class' on that video)
Here is a blurb from Dan's e-mail tonight:

Base camp day was pretty cool. Instead of a recording of reveille played on a bugle, we were instead awoken to Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle" and brought out into the passageway indoc week style, except a whole lot less serious and stressful. They beat us lightly, and joked around a little bit. We teased some of the other platoons too. My favorite part was when they had us do jumping jacks while sounding off "Mr. Tanksley is compensating # sir!" (He is the alfa 2 platoon officer and we are in alfa 3). All the while, there is other music playing in the background, like highway to the danger zone, the theme from caddyshack, everybody wants to rule the world, message in a bottle, etc. It was pretty funny. Then we got ready and went and took our prog. Everyone passed. I got an 86. Not great, but right around where everyone else did. It was a hard test. Then we had drill competition. Since I wasn't competing, I went ahead and just took pictures, since the majority of the company spent the entire thing in parade rest. It was nice to be able to move freely and all. Then we had base camp day. Made fun of the staff officers, played some games, ate some food, etc. Then the privileges. We were granted senior status. There are a few perks associated with that, I don't remember them all. We were granted the freedom to take our eyes out of the boat, not square corners, and swing our arms in the passageway of chase hall. AND WE GOT CELL PHONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But we can't use them until tomorrow.

I didn't write about it, but earlier in the week (Tuesday I believe) they were playing capture the flag. Dan got run over by another OC and caught his face and throat were hit pretty hard by the OC's shoulder and elbow. They sent Dan to medical where he was given meds, told he has some nerve damage, and was told not to sound off or talk much. He called last night and sounded pretty bad, but he said it was a big improvement from how it was. Because he wasn't able to sound off he couldn't compete in the drill competition today. It was the top 3 people from each company and he had been selected to be one from his company.

Tomorrow they will be bused down to Virginia to meet up with the Eagle. Then Monday they will set sail back to New London and arrive the following Monday, the 23rd. Dan has earned individual liberty for Sunday as long as he doesn't have duty, which they won't know until later. It seems like he's looking forward to getting off campus and doing something new.

They will not have e-mails or anything while on the Eagle, but when they get back and he lets me know how it went I'll update then.