What a beautiful, beautiful duty day. We're having a force protection week, and I have it today and probably tomorrow also. It all started at 07:30, BMC came up to me and said you and Tiffany need to be in the boat right now. It took a little while before we got our game plan down after we got the boat underway. At first we were giving everyone a warning to stand clear of our ship even the Public Work boats. I quickly put a stop to that I let the boat officer know that I would Prosecute ( fancy word for Investigate someone), but I won't tell everyone to stand off. I told him that if we did that in Thailand then it would kind of hard get rid of our sewage. We stood out there till 12:30 looking for "bad guys". We did chase off one Civilian craft though that had strayed outside the channel Since big ship use the channel small boys tend to stray out like this, mush safer that way. After warned the craft off though the port security started running people down that might interfere with the excersize to warn then earlier. When the real "bad guys" showed up they played cat and mouse. First they tried to get us to stray outside the set limits of our jurisdiction. If we were actually moored up at country Orange real bad guys would do this. Make you outside and then try to make you engage. If you do then your screwed, it would be like an invasion or would be once they twisted the hell out of it. Real Rules Of Engagement stuff. Anyway we did venture over the line but I recovered my senses and headed back in despite what the Force Protection Officer was telling me to do. When that didn't work then the bogey made me follow him to the farthest part of my envelope so his buddy could sneak in behind us and attack our ship. When the ship called us to respond we took off but found that the ship already had themselves covered so we headed to find out what bogey was doing. What he was doing was speeding into the slip to attack the other ship in our little detail. So I hightailed it in and we paralelled his course and speed and worned him that he was in a restricted area. While we talked to him I slowly closed the distance between us and I fendered him 180 degrees that bogey was headed out bound. That was when I made a crucial mistake. As soon as he was headed away from a protected unit I was suppose to back down so if he tried to peel off I would be able to cut him off before he could get in close enough to cause any damge. Well I didn't. actually I just finished thinking to myself that I was on the wrong side of this craft. he was on the inside so if I fendered him I would actually be pushing him into the unit I was trying to protect. That was when he broke off and headed into his target. If this were a real bogey I would have made the news in a bad way, I would have been the guy that fumbled and caused all those people to become dead or wounded at some liberty port in Singapore.
After that it was stand by for our reliefs from our partner in this excersize. they came along eventually, about 30 minutes late, in bug clunky Gig. They don't run very fast fast I think their top speed is somewhere around 13 knots. Now that was quick when I first started running boats in 1990 but now days that would be like the cops running down a perp driving a Porche in a dump truck. I know if I had to relieve RHIB in a big clunky I would have been embarassed, I felt sorry for the cowswain. After we parked the RHIB and headed in I was ready for some eats. That was too bad for me. It was disgusting while we were out in the boat the mess decks brought down ten pizza to feed the duty section and the slackers went through it like a bunch half starved dogs. When I got there there were only 4 boxes left and not even a piece of crust left. Need less to say I put on my " Fuck You " face. When they asked for slickers because of the weather coming in I told them I would work on it and sat for another ten minutes going through my e-mail. By the time I actually got them their rain suits the rain had gone. Eventually I'll forget this incident but for now I'm still enraged whenever I talk about it. It showed a lack a leadership by just throwing pizzas out there as if it were slop for pigs with not a one to babysit to ensure everyone on watch was covered.