We were off the coast of Guatemala in early 2002. Stopped for a quick liberty port while some of the crew were performing maintenance on the ship (stationed on the USS Oldendorf). Our mission for the next three months was Drug Ops aka catch go-fast drug boats trying to smuggle anything illegal up the coast into North America. (details and pics of the drug ops for a later post) Little did most of the crew knew, the ship was dead in the water. Completely blacked out . All engines dead, generators off, no ac, no water, zip, zero. The crew who were standing duty (the third who protected the ship while the rest were on land) had to sleep on the outside skin of the ship, even piss and shit off the side of the boat. We were literally defensively and the captain was seconds away of being relieved of his duty. So what did any good naval crew do…save the captain’s ass!

Its pretty damn embarrassing when a multi-million dollar naval ship sits dead in the water in international waters. But partly, everyone’s attitude was, “cool, let’s enjoy carnival in guatemala for the next few days”. But obviously the entire crew thought, “shit how fucked up would it be to get towed back home to San Diego because the crew and officers onboard were too retarded”.

I can’t claim I was part of the group who helped regain ship’s power in extreme darkness and turmoil, not to mention save the captain, executive officer, and the divison officer’s ass, but I can say I helped keep my own GPS equipment up and accurate which fed all data to all the tomahawk missiles and weapons system.

My GPS system needed 24volts of power to keep the crypto in the system. The difference between your car’s gps and the military’s is like the size of a city block and the size of a car. Basically with that 24volts and hush hush crypto, you can’t hit or shoot shit.

So what did I do to solve this? What I always did for fun to shock people and myself in the tongue…I combined 16 D batteries all together with electric tape and jerry rigged that into the system. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. I simple asked, if I do this, will I get in trouble? And I was assured nothing would happen to me breaking protocol and a bunch of UCMJ rules. And alas, the ship regained its power after three days, no one got fired but the little insight which people don’t understand about the military and “power” is that the crew members who fixed the ship may have gotten an award for fixing it, but the officer who was in charge of them got all the credit. And unfortunately, during those times when I was in the military, I learned quickly thats how “power” worked.