Three Days at Sea!

Tumaco was a great success, but now it's time to head North! We left Tumaco at about 11:00am on 17 Jun and started the three day transit to La Union, El Salvador. Usually, between each port, we take a day "Strategic Pause." After nearly two solid weeks of non-stop, early morning to late at night work, it is a single day where we let people sleep in, stop the planning rhythm, and usually try to throw in a Bar-B-Que on the flight deck, or in Navy parlance: A Steel-Beach Picnic.

Of course, no Steal-Beach Picnic would be complete without the band! So while the rest of us take the day off, the band plays on! I'll tell you, I was a little suspicious when this Air Force band showed up to set sail on a Navy ship, but these folks are great! They do a tremendous amount of work, supporting all kinds of events on the ship and off. And on top of that, they are GOOD!

So after three days, we dropped anchor off the coast of El Salvador, in the Southwest corner of the country in a town called La Union. El Salvador is known as the "Land of Volcanos" as there are over 200 volcanic peaks in this, the smallest country in Central America.

I worked with the deck crew to drop the anchor and took the following pictures as we anchored at about 6:30am.

I'll try to do another post tomorrow with some pictures of our operations ashore!