Today was pretty good. I had duty on the flight deck, we had an unrep, vertrep, boat ops, focsle ops, and 50 cal training. The unrep was just to get a taste of fuel. didn't even last an hour from set up to break down. The vertrep wasn't even that exciting, we were to get 16 pallets of cargo on deck. I was, as always so far, LSE for the focsle. We received 4 pallets in two drops, then waited around for what seemed like 15 minutes for the helo to make another pass. Finally we got word that the helo was finally coming to give us as many hits as we could take in our little square. What that should have meant was 10 - 15 pallets worth, what it turned out to mean was one. So in the end it was a whole lot of sitting around, we didn't have enough hits to send decent load of retrograde back.
While waiting around for another delivery we noticed a triwall box on a pallet wrapped in a net roll off the USS Bridge's flight deck and into the water. When I saw the event I made a snide remark that we were going to lower the RHIB to retrieve it. It turned out that that was actually prophetic, except foe the retieve part. Right after the vertrep we set flight quarters again to recover our helo. Me and my riggers were sitting in the hanger waiting when the word was passed over the 1MC to man the focsle. It appears that somewhere word got out that our mail was in the triwall so the capt. wanted to save it. First we sent the swimmer out to hook up the box, and tried to haul it board by hand. When it proved to be too heavy we lowered the RHIB to save it. When the RHIB pulled alongside the box they discovered it didn't contain our mail. Just a bunch of trash, so we went from rescue op to SCAT training. While the RHIB was safely away from our newly aquired target the gunners plugged it with a shit load of .50 cal rounds.
After that fun and games we finally landed the helo for a hot pump relaunch. But just when I thought we were done for 3 hours flight quarters was set again 30 minutes later. This flight quarters was for shut down, after I which I just left thinking that that was that bird shut down now it's time for chow. So down I go to get some pork chops. It turns out that 'that' wasn't over yet. I discovered my mistake after I had finished eating and was headed to the office for some serious fuckin' off. Over the 1MC I hear, " BM2 Baxter helo hanger." Damn, that's the third time this 'pac. I know this because people, mainly bosses, count this for you. When I get to the hanger the bird is turing on deck and crash and smash is still in the hanger. I asked when did we resume flight quarters, and received the answer that they hadn't secured yet. This time wasn't a big deal, as soon as I headed out on deck and assumed control the bird shut down. Of course I didn't stick around for the HCO to ball me out for leaving station, he didn't ask me to stay and I wasn't going to volunteer.